Posts by Surreal 61 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2011
I hope (but don't expect) that the newest members of the Leopards Eating Faces Party who aren't deported will vote smarter in future elections, should those occur. As a white male landowner the leopards probably won't be eating My face.
I'm not mad, just very disappointed. Again.
MUST NOT FEED TROLL.... ARRRRRG...
// And yet, I'm fed. Urp. (Troll has become dyspeptic.)
COULDNT CARE LESS
// Thank you; I quite agree. -1 for missing apostrophe.
Could care less makes no sense, it infers that they do care as they could care less. ARRRGGGGRRRGG!!!!!11!1!
// Yes, but, oh noes! You've let slip one of MY pet peeves!
// Now your infer grammar shaming! (Lol. I like to imagine other involuntary proof-readers cringing. I meant "You're in for...", of course.)
// Please repeat several times: "they imply, I infer".
// I know that C-style remarks aren't correct in written english. I'm a yuuge hypocrite.
// I infer that your motives were pure, though.
// Carry on. After this innovative stunt I'd best do something productive so I'm not forced back to the office for tighter supervision!
Gargoyles, per Neil Stephenson's Snowcrash:
"Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt...".
I imagine that if they roam about heavily armed they won't be teased too badly. By civilians, anyway.
I think that the real problem is that there IS no threat of jail time. Having to repay a percentage of the fees collected is definitely, provably, not a deterrent.
Lock some of the bastards At The Top of the company up and watch how quickly other predatory companies change their ways.
If I could rob banks and the only deterrent was that I *might* have to give 15% back if I was caught, I would not be working 40 hours every week.
I remember when Microsoft announced that NT4 was C2 Certified! "Woohoo; now please stop looking at NetWare!" [ No NIC or floppy drive included, YMMV ]
Rather promptly, nobody talked about the Rainbow Books in the present tense again.
As recently as 2018 Mudge & Sarah's Cyber-ITL.org was testing OSs and software, and publishing the results for free! Then, they stopped.
Can we never have nice things?!?
That's all. The cat says it's time for my nap.
Worse than nothing. It's yet another instance of journalists acting as though something, anything, Trump says has a basis in reality.
Sure, report what he _does_: "Look! He drank water from a cup like a big boy!"
"Oooh! He's pouting, but he wore a mask!"
Stuff he says? Spare me.
Yes, it *has* been a lovely day alone with my computer, hiding from the imaginary virus that makes the Toddler In Chief look like a useless moron.
I missed the 10-minute edit deadline to add:
Oh, FFS. I've gotta do another one. Google "innovis" and there's a link to Wikipedia with this snippet:
"Innovis is a provider of consumer data solutions and is considered a CRA in the United States, the others being Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, PRBC, SageStream, and ARS. As of 2013 most sources of information about consumer credit repair seldom mention either Innovis or PRBC, a fifth agency."
I guess I take minuscule comfort that there isn't a "Trump" credit agency as well. Damned small comfort, that.
Good on you for freezing your credit with 3 credit companies.
Surprise! There's a 4th parasitic a-hole (credit bureau) called Innovis.
My report is (and was) frozen with the others, but a Verizon store two states away (in Texas) still sold "me" a new iPhone this July. I found out when the bills started arriving.
Luckily, it's super-easy to freeze that one because they do Nothing to validate who is on their website asking for the freeze. Seriously: see it to believe it.
Christian: thou art full-to-overflowing with manure. Did Facebook decline to make phones for your Euro-Con, or wtf? You don't deserve a new essay, so I'll partially re-snark:
When you spew bullshit based on hearsay, and/or use the magic phrase "it is rumoured", you out yourself as a hysteria-stoking ninny with an agenda.
Btw, I heard that at the coolest Euro Cons, doggies say "meow" and cats go "woof-woof!" ...
From 18 years first-hand experience, there have never, ever been Facebook-provided smartphone badges, or corporate-branded anything. There were electronic, highly hackable badges, mostly designed by the likes of Joe Grand.
...
I don't usually pick nits, but you're freaking crawlin' with 'em, comrade.
You know, Christian,
I heard that at the coolest Euro Cons, doggies say "meow" and cats go "woof-woof!"
WTF, you ask? Simple: when you spew bullshit based on hearsay, and utter the magic phrase "it is rumoured", you out yourself as a hysteria-stoking ninny with an agenda.
"Uncritical about sponsoring"? You mean Defcon. In Las Vegas. Lots of haxors? Huh.
From 18 years first-hand experience, there have never, ever been Facebook-provided smartphone badges, or corporate-branded anything. There were electronic, highly hackable badges, mostly designed by the likes of Joe Grand.
"Teh Kiddies have unfettered access to ethanol!" No. The event is held in casinos. Casinos have security aside from the goons. Casinos take great care not to violate liquor laws, etc.
I don't usually pick nits, but you're freaking crawlin' with 'em, comrade.
Given the machine's age, that should be trivial. _The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC_,Jun 1985, would have you write The Magic Byte* to appropriate areas of the File Allocation Table(s) (FAT. Both of them) to mark a bad sector. Use debug.com, or Norton's diskedit.exe
* Can't recall the value. It looks like an upside-down 'e' in the ASCII chart. Use the Alt key and the numeric keypad. It must be nap time by now. Where's my nurse?
"Depends how hard it is to acquire admin privileges..."
I expect an NSA insider with access to, or who coded some of these tools (the dreaded Nation-State-level threat) shouldn't have trouble elevating privs. (S)he might even just break out an exploit from the toolkit being auctioned and apply it.
p.s. мое судно на воздушной подушке полно угрей
you wrote: "Do you really believe that car manufacturers specify to their software engineers that the API has a 'disable brakes' instruction built in?"
You obviously weren't at Defcon this year. Disable brake. Violently turn steering wheel with a servo (so it can parallel park, since you don't know how). Yank the seatbelt tight and startle the heck out of the driver... They didn't mention finding the accelerate API, but they were such nice boys they probably wouldn't. OnStar can tell my wife's car to slow to a crawl if it's reported stolen, so the "turn it down" call is there in her relatively non-techy 2011 Chevy Cruze.
That said, I hadn't heard of this conspiracy since I don't get out of my cave often. Get the Reader's Digest version from google by searching: car-hacking-code-released-at-defcon
It's adorable when people believe machines are trustworthy, safe, and unhackable.
If it's Black, that's boring, but if Google creates one that's mauve! Yowza!
I can't get excited about doing the Same Ol' in a slightly different way. I've had X10 modules throughout the house for turning lights and appliances on and off for ages, and a "firecracker" to let the PC control it if I really want to. More recently I control my Nest (R) Learning Thermostat of Wonderfulness from an Android app, or a browser, via TCP/IP. Whee! I can turn the heat on when I'm 10 minutes from home!
Pro Tip: to destroy a compact fluorescent bulb within a day or so, use an X10 module to control it. I suspect that it cycles the power on and off thousands of times per second. In any case, incandescent bulbs don't suffer the same fate. Sure, I *could* have the X10 control a relay and avoid that, but that's too much work.
Hey! What do you mean "nobody fricking cares"?
I'd guess* that a satellite capable of shooting down another would be more expensive, in materials at least, than one that just hangs up there doing more normal satellite kinda stuff. Do you prefer The Doritos of Surveillance? "Shoot down all you want, we'll make more!"
* dammit hplasm, I'm a geek, not a Defense Contractor / Population Control Technician!
I wandered into a T-Mobile store two weeks ago and was surprised to score their last 12GB Nexus 4 (I'm in Arizona, fyi). Now the missus has my venerable Blackberry, and I've got a "relatively huge" network device clamped to my belt.
One downside, one-day battery-life aside, is the lack of a proper case for it. I bought an Otterbox from Amazon and had to perform surgery with a dremel tool, adding holes for the camera, flash, and most importantly, the proximity detector on the top-left of the display. Without the prox detector uncovered, it assumed that it was constantly mashed against my ear, making it impossible to hang up a call without powering the device off.
The Otterbox also makes it a big ol' device, instead of the shiny, slim, metrosexual accessory that it so yearns to be. I'll live, and so will it, even after I inevitably drop it on a hard surface.
I also had to download a 3rd-party volume-control app to be able to actually hear the remote end of a phone call. That's just weird, but problem solved.
I'm rather enjoying running approximately the same OS on my phone as I do on my desktop (RHES 5.8, btw).
Well, perhaps I'm being hysterical, but I believe knowing about a potential threat is a good thing.
In the tradition of silly examples: if I'm notified by a reliable source that there are bears in the local park, I won't send my daughter unescorted to enjoy her smoked salmon and crackers. That doesn't, however, imply that I feel compelled to lob hand grenades into the park. See? :-D
I, on the other hand, LOVE IT! It's much better than _CATS!_ and I want to take it again and again! Ok, only twice so far, and the 2nd time I suggested at the end that they may want to track who has completed it already.
That, and they need more stories with an attractive-buxom-redhead angle.
Ah, replying to myself again, just like talking to Mrs Surreal.
Just wanted to clarify that I'm not talking about "Blu", NLA or whatever. Look at sites like ecigsupply, madvapes, vaperschoice. I started with nasty/stale "tobacco-flavored", pre-filled, pricey ecigs.
As you were; smoke 'em if you've got em...
My Army "buddy" was from Kentucky, worked in tobacco warehouses and seemingly saw himself as a smoking evangelist.
The missus and I have been using ecigs exclusively for about 6 months now. There are buttons to push, batteries to change and charge, various little devices to play with (atomizers! cartomizers! drip-tips!) , clean, unclog, refill with myriad flavors. Then you can get into variable voltage and ohms, new circuitry, form factors, variable (and verifiable) nicotine levels! Despite sucking money from the available stock, it's still much cheaper.
Ah, the fun. I think it's better than just setting little sticks on fire, flicking ashes about and littering-up the yard and premises! Much, much less destructive to ones health as well.
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