* Posts by Captain DaFt

3821 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007

Stop asking people for their passwords, rights warriors yell at US Homeland Security

Captain DaFt

"We desperately need a Trump icon. I feel it could well be used often !!!!"

Considering the ever increasing number of Idiots In Office™ polluting Governments worldwide this century, how about an icon showing a character with an open mouth (inserted shoe optional), and a large vacant hole between the ears.

That should cover most cringe worthy politicians.

That apple.com link you clicked on? Yeah, it's actually Russian

Captain DaFt

Re: an easy fix for firefox

That fix also works for SeaMonkey. Thanks.

OpenStack: Pleeeeease stop panicking, Intel and Rackspace still love us

Captain DaFt

Re: Is intel in trouble?

Probably, some bean counter noticed that profits had raised by .00001% less than last quarter, and notified management by screaming:

"RED ALERT!! Hit the Big RED Austerity Button™ NAOOW!!"

Feel guilty for scoffing Easter chocolate? Good news: Scientists have made NEGATIVE mass

Captain DaFt

Help me out here

So, if I'm designing an artificial gravity, should I put a mass generator in the floor, or a negative mass generator in the ceiling?

Or both!?

Guess who's back at Microsoft? Excel, Word creator Charles Simonyi

Captain DaFt

Woah!

"I am excited, stoked, amped, and elated to join forces again with Microsoft"

Must've been one Hell of an income raise for him!

eBay threatens to block Australians from using offshore sellers

Captain DaFt

Australian government:

"Ax, meet golden goose, golden goose, meet ax. I'm sure this arrangement will enrich us greatly!"

Leaked NSA point-and-pwn hack tools menace Win2k to Windows 8

Captain DaFt

"Finally how an earth do a "hacking group" hack into the NSA if the NSA are aware of all the exploits before them?"

How could they not? Once it was confirmed that NSA had a huge cache of zero day exploits hidden away, it was the Klondike Gold Rush all over again.

Dangerous, risky, but, oh, the rewards if you succeeded!

Apple nabs permit to experiment with self-driving iCars in Cali

Captain DaFt

“use simple geometry to identify which edges of which obstacles an agent is most likely to collide.”

AKA what every robotics hobbyist group has bee doing since the Gameboy camera hit the market.

Captain DaFt

Re: Not The Only One

"For Fruit to make a pile of cash it is not necessary for them to have a car but to have the technology for sale/license to the automakers."

"Nice self driving car you've got there. Now if you license our tech, you you won't have to spend years in court with us before you can sell it."

Microsoft raises pistol, pulls the trigger on Windows 7, 8 updates for new Intel, AMD chips

Captain DaFt

Re: I don't think that snakes have feet.

"To begin with, they were lizards …"

Heh, considering the gatling-like rate they're blasting feet, surely they started out as a millipede! ☺

Back to the Future 2: Gasp! America's trade watchdog discovers the risks of 'free' movies

Captain DaFt

"This all sounds like someone in government got gobsmacked with a clue..."

I'm guessing that the Justin Bieber video someone downloaded turned out to be a ransom ware trojan. ☺

Eh, could have been worse, it could have actually been a Justin Bieber video! ☺

Captain DaFt

Revealed!

Will Maxson, AKA Captain Obvious! ☺

US military makes first drop of Mother-of-All-Bombs on Daesh-bags

Captain DaFt

You forgot to add this video:

https://youtu.be/R4FfNYjw6qU

China emerges as digital rights champion with new info privacy law

Captain DaFt

Re: tl;dr

"Nobody other than us gets to spy on our citizens!"

As opposed to the US stance:

"Come'n'get it! World's biggest data buffet! The more ya pay, the higher we'll pile your plate! All major corporations welcome!"

Apple wets its pants over Swatch ad tagline

Captain DaFt

Re: This is what lawyers do

¿Qué?

Intelligent robots can walk the walk – but if they can't talk the talk, we can't get along

Captain DaFt

"how about Artificial Stupidity for the time being?"

No thanks, there's just no market for Artificial Stupidity when the real stuff is such an overabundant commodity.

AI, on the other hand, is eagerly sought because Real Intelligence is so scarce in the World.

Windows 10 Creators Update general rollout begins with a privacy dialogue

Captain DaFt

Another MS update,

another forum filled with people complaining about it and helpful types linking to tweaks and programs to make it slightly less a total omnishambles, and snarky types saying "Use 'X' instead, noobs!"

Congrats MS, your OS is finally at the stage GNU/Linux was at

Thirty fargin' years ago!

'Evidence of Chinese spying' uncovered on eve of Trump-Xi summit

Captain DaFt

"Surely the NSA knew since they've hacked into the Chinese governmnet"

Well, they will know about 2036 or thereabouts, when they finally wade through all the yottabytes of data they've collected.

This year? "Hey look at this data from 2001! Terrorists are planning an attack on the World Trade Center!"

McAfee is McAfee again, promises security with kum ba yah

Captain DaFt

Re: Perhaps someone with Photoshop skills...

Uhm, Magneto?

Pong, anyone? How about Pong on a vintage oscilloscope?

Captain DaFt

Re: Kudos for the effort....

"It reminds me of a binary "computer" my 3rd grade teacher's son built in the 1960's"

This one?

Captain DaFt

"the only way to top that, would be by building a Pong game from thermionic valves."

How about a more sophisticated tennis game, using relays?

https://youtu.be/s2E9iSQfGdg

Tennis for two, built in 1958!

Manchester pulls £750 public crucifixion offer

Captain DaFt

Re: Cross

"He sounds quite cross"

You think he's cross? Just wait until the Messiah returns!

He descends from the heavens, surrounded by heralding angels, the adoring throngs gather, and then:

"Crucifixes!? You're all wearing crucifixes? Is this some sort of sick joke? I was killed with a freaking crucifix!"

Mac Pro update: Apple promises another pricey thing it will no doubt abandon after a year

Captain DaFt

@ J. Cook

Better check your sarcasm detector. ☺

Verizon utters solemn Oath: Yahoo! will remain Yahoo!

Captain DaFt

Re: Ya-who?

"PS: Oath: is: a: lousy: name: for: an: ad: snooper:"

They were going to call it what users normally called Yahoo! and AOL, but compromised on OATH: because SHIT! was considered to edgy for the market. ☺

Stop us if you've heard this one before: IBM sheds more workers – this time, tech sales

Captain DaFt

Question:

Will the last IBM worker be sent stateside to turn the lights out?

Creators Update gives Windows 10 a bit of an Edge, but some old annoyances remain

Captain DaFt

Re: Ads in Explorer?

"This will get hacked to buggery, and the results will be hilarious."

MS boasts that Win10 has, what, 10 million installs now?

I see nothing hilarious about a botnet that size!

IT contractors behind IR35 calculator to leave HMRC... because of IR35

Captain DaFt

Re: I have a question ..

-If you answer with "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right" -

Better yet, use 'IDDQD' and not only do you never pay taxws again, you get a peerage!

Uber wasn't to blame for robo-ride crash – or was it? Witness said car tried to 'beat the lights'

Captain DaFt

"but if it is a standard 4 way intersection with traffic lights, what is the issue?"

Good heaven's man, have you not noticed? They all drive on the wrong side of the road! ☺

Samsung Galaxy S8: Slimmer bezels, a desktop mode – and yet another me-too AI pal

Captain DaFt

Huh?

After all the cash lost last time, you still can't remove the battery?

And added an AI assistant you really, really don't want to get angry!

They love tempting Fate, don't they? ☺

Pirate of the Caribbean to play Hacker of the Caribbean

Captain DaFt

Go watch Beetlejuice

Then tell me Michael Keaton wouldn't do well.

FYI Docs.com users: You may have leaked passwords, personal info – thousands have

Captain DaFt

Re: The cloud..

Your data away.

Astroboffins clock thriving stellar nursery nestled in violent supermassive black hole

Captain DaFt

Re: Star cannon

"Fires actual stars as ammo. Amazing!"

And removing the original design flaw by using the exhaust ports as the weapon, ingenious!

Boffins crowdsource hunt for 'Planet 9'

Captain DaFt

Re: "...you'll have to find someone else to name it after"

Here, I was thinking we could go with that '50s bad Science Fiction movie classic, Planet X, as in tenth planet, but they had to bollix that up demoting Pluto, didn't they?

'Planet IX' just doesn't have the glamour to it.

USA can afford golf for Trump. Can't afford .com for FBI infosec service

Captain DaFt

Re: @James 51 .... WRONG!

"He doesn't appear to have gotten much of substance done, though."

Well he, Trump, has done more for bringing transparency to the doings of the Whitehouse and DC in general, just by his press worthy antics, than any former President has done via policy for decades.

I give him credit for that at least, even if it wasn't his intention.

Ex-military and security firms oppose Home Sec in WhatsApp crypto row

Captain DaFt

Suppose...

They get their way; all communications monitored and analyzed, every conceivable type of miscreant incarcerated or watched, what then?

Well, History shows that they'll be shocked, amazed, and caught utterly unawares when they're dragged into the street and hung from the nearest lamppost, eh, Mussolini, Ceausescu?

Captain DaFt

Re: Bravo

""Common-Sense-Man" who has a sidekick called Deductive Reasoning and they face an endless battle against Instant Gratification Man and his millions of lethargic minions known as The Army of Ignorants."

Spoiler ALERT!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Common-Sense-Man Lost, due to the behind the scenes Mechanisations of Madame Mayhem, and Instant Gratification Man now controls one of the most powerful countries in the Free World.

Bloke whose drone was blasted out of sky by angry dad loses another court battle for compo

Captain DaFt

Re: Cricket bats

"just sounds like you're banging cocoanuts"

Aaand that's another addition to my list of fetishes I want no part of! ☺

Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?

Captain DaFt

Re: Microsoft time

"Did you get to ride on a dinosaur before they went extinct, too?"

Nah, I rode that dinosaur (486), long after it was supposed to be extinct! (until 2002) ☺

Never had a computer/OS combo I liked as much since.

Captain DaFt

Re: Microsoft time

"(This would have been with Win95, maybe 98, with thin coax)"

Ah, Win 98! Back in the day, the latest version of Firebird no longer supported Win 3.11, so I reluctantly* decided to retire my old 486 after over a decades worth of use, and purchased a second hand PII machine with Win 98 loaded on it.

Hooked up the two with a LapLink cable, and started transferring the hundreds of megabytes of files across.

The transfer time was given as 1. (string of numbers)E(two digits) minutes!

Left it running nights, and every night the 98 machine would crash, leaving the Win 3.11 machine waiting**.

The transfer took the better part of three weeks.

*I had beaten, bullied, and abused that machine into performing exactly how I wanted it to perform, I was loath to give it up.

**Used Calmira as the UI on Win 3.11. It made it remarkably bulletproof. http://www.calmira.de/

Astroboffins stunned by biggest brown dwarf ever seen – just a hop and a skip away (750 ly)

Captain DaFt

Re: It's quite a small object

"Dark matter is the luminiferous aether of our age. It was invented to prop up existing theories"

Occam's razor.

There's an effect that acts like an unseen mass affecting galaxy's rotation. It could be an undiscovered interaction between mass and space, or matter/energy/space, or it could be an unforeseen consequence of known laws, or it actually could be an undetected mass.

Simplest explanation is undetected mass, so most research tends in the direction of figuring out what it is.

Next simplest is unforeseen consequence of known laws, so if the undetected mass research finds nothing, that's what gets looked at next.

If that doesn't pan out, then we're left with undiscovered interaction(s), which will take a paradigm shift to uncover.

So we're testing for the easiest and most likely answer first, then the next likeliest, until we're all just standing around scratching our heads saying "WTF?" until someone has a "Eureka! moment", then we all say, "Duh, how obvious! How did we miss that!?"

That's the way it's worked with science since the beginning

'Windows 10 destroyed our data!' Microsoft hauled into US court

Captain DaFt

Aw, Bless

I don't know if this one is limited to Win10, but it is jaw dropping:

http://blog.robertelder.org/zipping-corrupts-eclipse-workspace/

Seems "Windows 'Send to Compressed (zipped) folder' utility has a mandatory optional feature to automatically not include certain folders in the archive without telling you."

I've Been Moved: IBMers in same division slapped with 2nd redundo scheme in 2 months

Captain DaFt

"I could go on, but then I'd have to post anonymously..."

One more for you then:

Intelligent Brain Missing

Profitless Twitter starts rumour of paid-for Tweetdeck option

Captain DaFt

Re: Couldn't it simply ask money from Trump for every tweet?

"...yeah, and Twitter would end up polluted with worthless, self-indulgent dross from politicians and show-biz dipshits."

And that would be different from now?

TRAPPIST-1's planets are quiet. Quiet as the grave, in fact

Captain DaFt

Re: More Magic than Goldilocks orbit distance...

"Earth has a one in a million combination of life supporting conditions."

Life Supporting conditions for Earth life, true.

But who says life elsewhere plays by the same, exact rules?

Good news, everyone! Two pints a day keep heart problems at bay

Captain DaFt

"There is only one definition of heavy drinking I agree with"

My favorite: "You're too drunk if you can't hang onto the ground with both hands." ☺

Malware 'disguised as Siemens software drills into 10 industrial plants'

Captain DaFt

Re: The ineritors of Stuxnet

"so how does one make money out of ICS mallware?"

Well there's a population of miscreants that want to for reasons other than profit. (espionage, sabotage, LULZ, whatever)

So obviously, you profit by selling it to them.

This AI stuff is all talk! Bots invent their own language to natter away behind humans' backs

Captain DaFt

This seems closer to 'Sally', the Isaac Asimov story about smart cars that developed their own language to converse without humans eavesdropping.

Three cops to data breach

Captain DaFt

Re: Three

I think you've overestimated the number by three.

BTW, I always the name Three referred to its board's heroes; Larry, Moe, and Curly.