Re: history repeating itself
That's exactly what I was going to say!!
Posts by JCitizen
947 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2012
Privateers race to capture forgotten NASA space probe using crowdsourced cash
Apple stabs Heartbleed bug in AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule gear
Thursday 24th April 2014 16:43 GMT 
OOoops!
Well my brother's a Mac head, and he is already realizing Apple is just like every other concoction out there - you will find vulns in about anything if you look hard enough. I'm sure he'll have to patch both his Airport Extreme and time machine as well.
Now I'm wondering if my company is being honest about their GPL firmware?!!
Most Americans doubt Big Bang, not too sure about evolution, climate change – survey
Fancy joining Reg hack on quid-a-day challenge?
Tom Ridge: Private sector lagging in cybersecurity
Eugene Kaspersky: Ukraine conflict hurts enterprise security
Top ten biz software vendors reveal Heartbleed exposure
Saturday 12th April 2014 04:29 GMT
Re: Just think of all those landfill firewall routers and modems out there...
@Trevor_Pot - you said,"Are you insane enough to leave it's management port open to the WAN?"
What about when you access your router on the LAN side? I use SSL to do that too - their could be MITM malware on one of the computers in the LAN. I always assume compromise everywhere.
UFO, cosmic ray or flasher? NASA rules on Curiosity curiosity
Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:45 GMT 
Cosmic ray
I occasionally get a flash of light at night in the vitreous fluid of my eye ball! It only happens once in a blue moon, and is very faint and fast. The energy here on earth is very weak compared to the same experience on the space station. They were very startling at first because I thought I was having a stroke. but I could see the floaters for a split second, so I knew it wasn't a brain aneurysm or anything like that. And not a cloud in the sky I might add - although it could have just as well been lightning from a mild earth quake in our area. Those are even more rare. With the drought and the settling of the Ogallala Aquifer it could very well be. I wonder if any geologists have proposed this for the Mars shot as well? I'm sure Mars has "earth" quakes too!?
Curiosity finds not-very-Australian-shaped rock on Mars
Melting permafrost switches to nasty, high-gear methane release
Wednesday 9th April 2014 06:27 GMT 
Methane breaks down faster than CO2...
But I digress anyway. I'm surprised they didn't mention that methane ice in the oceans, which probably over shadows the land problem by a wide margin, is melting at a break neck pace! I'd think they would mine that stuff as it makes a great energy source. Burning it makes less CO2 than other fossil energy sources, and would probably be relatively cheap, by comparison. Why is it that no one brings up life mass as a measure of carbon entrapment. It isn't just trees that trap carbon you know! What if an explosion of life were to entrap great gobs of carbon? Oh wait! That is what formed coal!
Anything is better than coal - eventually they will be able to recycle carbon through the food chain and between celullosic ethanol and cow flatulence, we will all be in tall cotton!! Ironically carbon makes a better energy storage source in ultra-capacitors, and is so rapidly becoming a favorite building material, that it could become scarce in the not so distant future! Our cars will soon be made mostly of carbon fiber, nano technology based manufacturing is coming up with all kinds of cheaper materials science for it, and I got a feeling carbon bucky-balls will end up a major contributor to medicine and everything in between! By then they will be complaining that we will be headed for the next ice age! HA!
You can play Flappy Bird on a POINT OF SALE TERMINAL
'Graceful' solar flare erupts from surface of Sun – NASA vid
Soccer's dull? A MIND-CONTROLLED robo-suit will be used to take first World Cup 2014 kick
Systems cock-up plagued new hospital in Melbourne
Wednesday 2nd April 2014 07:36 GMT 
This is just one of the things wrong with health care systems...
They have never had to stand the test of righteous competition, where the weak die a judicious death, and fall by the wayside; so the consequence is that righteous patients, through no defect of their own, pay the ultimate price. When are we going to allow the free market system to blow away the chaff of unrighteousness!!!
ECCENTRIC, PINK DWARF dubbed 'Biden' by saucy astronomers
WTF is … the multiverse?
Friday 21st March 2014 05:29 GMT
Re: The long drawn out tea-time of the soul
The moment after the big bang seems understandable to me, and your description of a universe ending in "evaporation", makes sense, but I didn't read anything in your comment about the expansion of mass because of acceleration? I keep reading the universe is still expanding and accelerating even now. If this continues without abatement, the mass of the universe will increase to an infinite point and every particle will became so massive that it literally becomes a black hole and collapses out of this universe. Doesn't my drivel make any sense. I'm ignorant - enlighten me!
Grav waves: Moment when 'father of Big Bang inflation' learns he was RIGHT ALL ALONG
Friday 21st March 2014 05:14 GMT
Re: Science is amazing!!
I see no reason creationist can't abide by any scientific experiment, especially if it is reproducible. The big bang is not necessarily a proof that creation did happen in the Biblical sense, in fact it rather supports it for some who may not understand fully, because it happened so quickly in the 1st moments of the universe. We are all in search of the truth, and only an open mind can bring you to the Lord. Taking Genesis so literally when the rest of the Bible is admittedly cryptic is strange to me, and I wonder why so many Christians are so afraid of the search for truth. Nothing in science has shaken my faith. In fact it set me on a course toward it.
NASA: Earth JUST dodged comms-killing SOLAR BLAST in 2012
Friday 21st March 2014 04:53 GMT
Re: Really?
@Peter2 - Back then phone and telegraph wire was almost 1/8' tp 1/4" solid copper wire. It probably did TOO GOOD of a job conducting electricity. With such a giant web of wire emanating out from major populations centers, even back then, it would have been like a giant capacitor. I imagine it was the sudden discharge of so much EMP that would literally make things explode, just like a nuclear EMP. Now days, we use some kind of aluminum alloy for above ground carrying capacity, and it can take more, but it can gather more too! I'm not sure it wouldn't be just as bad or worse, unless certain emergency trips are in place - just this summer's sun spot activity has burned out our local electric infrastructure several times. We didn't even have a full load of air conditioning on the system yet!
Ironically fiber optic communications cable will be immune to this damage, but the power wires that travel with the fiber optic cable to power the repeaters inside the cable will probably be fried. Since these happen about every kilometer, you'd think they could service such points independently from the fiber cable. Also unfortunately we use such small solid state chip technology now that even a sneeze could blow the entire mobo on many devices. Modern cars would be out of commission but antique automobiles would be unaffected, especially since they are mostly stored indoors. Ham operators that are still using the old vacuum tube sets, will be immune to this especially if they disconnect the antenna before the event. But I doubt they could predict it. Civil Defense technology was developed way back in the 1950's to shield many systems, and but now we'd need automated sensors of some kind to disconnect things automatically. I don't see any movement toward that end. Maybe after our entire infrastructure gets fried they will finally find the money somehow to update the equipment to the new reality. Might as well if it is fried already! All this talk of a "SMART" grid may be the answer?
Help a hack: What's in your ultimate Windows XP migration toolkit?
Friday 21st March 2014 03:26 GMT
Re: One thing I'd suggest...
Ever tried Drive Vaccine? It is a little complicated to set up, but I hear it is a good replacement for Steady State and is pretty economical. At least it has been for me. However I've not had the time to set it up on a PC, and now that XP is going away, it may become my top priority. Folks around here just can't afford to update to hardware that can run the next iteration of Windows. They will just have to plod along with an expired XP, or at least use a LiveCD for sensitive web actions. With something like this hard drive locking capability, they could actually get rid of all the bloated anti-virus, and anti-malware that slowed the computer down before.
RIP Full Disclosure: Security world reacts to key mailing list's death
Friday 21st March 2014 02:32 GMT
Wow! Ten years?
It seemed longer ago to me! I never used it, I got my vulnerability information from other sources. I'd say there were many like me. We all saw it in the news for a while then it seemed to disappear! We all forgot about it in my security circles. I'd say it will never be missed. I am slightly sentimental about that time period, but that is about it.
ROBO-SNOWDEN: Iraq, the internet – two places the US govt invaded that weren't a threat
Friday 21st March 2014 01:52 GMT
Re: Stay tuned...
We didn't need no stinking 2001 Patriot ACT nor any of the subsequent scraps of paper congress should have wiped their behinds with! No matter what I think of Snowden, he is only pointing out what I could see coming every since 911, and that's an Orwellian nightmare that was not even worth doing. All they needed was a tiny bit more cooperation from the various US agencies to have prevented 911, as the data was there but only people who knew whistle blowers can get their heads blown off were trying to get someone to notice it without - getting their heads blown off! Afganistan should have been a SPEC OPS mission and that is all, we didn't need no stinking invasion to get what we needed done there. Heck it only took about 2000 to 5000 troops to route the Taliban in the 1st place. You don't need many more personnel than that in those situations. We would still have a fairly good relationship with Pakistan as well, without all the heavy handed John Wayne actions. I realize a lot of people were comparing this 911 thing to Pearl Harbor, but it was just stupid they couldn't see it coming. I've been watching terror grow every year since the Black September movement of the '70s, and any person paying attention to it and worth his/her salt could see this building up. I agree with Anonymous Coward on that point for sure! We should have quit tolerating it back in 1970, and worked to supress it more each year since, and learn something about the middle east and teach our ignorant school children the realities of the world! Hell we barely got them doing the three Rs by the time the "graduate" - if that is what you can call it. Matriculate would be closer, except it is more like brain leakage than anything otherwise.
Malaysia Airlines mystery: Click here for the TRUTH
Tuesday 18th March 2014 07:00 GMT
Re: transponder standby or off
Well I have to admit, that I saw a demo on CNN or something like that, that showed anyone with an ounce of knowledge would be able to disable that - at least the engine data burst was more difficult; but just because it ended 30 minutes before the hext burst is reaching for straws!
Tuesday 18th March 2014 06:39 GMT
Re: Phone signals
Exactly Nigel 11! Out in the hinterlands of the desert - no one would reach the "ground' in such a plane! Yes they prolly went lower than usual, but we are talking the VAST expanse of the world's oceans! Ever see the movie Cast Away? No matter it is a movie of the pure imagination - the fiction was closer to truth than ever before! Remember Flight 93!! (Y)
Tuesday 18th March 2014 06:25 GMT
Re: hints
Exactly Nigel 11! Just like flight 93 during 911, the passengers probably figured correctly that they were pawns in a terrorist game, and there was no risk in going all out to retake the flight. How have the terrorists convinced us other wise? Terrorism is truly stupid. It is scary, but if I'd been that stupid 'Bin Stupid Ladin, I would have backed off to lull the world into some kind of Lemming mode! But evil is ALWAYS stupid, so I might as well digress and let others comment away! HA!
Shuttleworth: Firmware is the universal Trojan
Tuesday 18th March 2014 05:23 GMT
Unfortunately we need to look at this!!!
Although I already suspected and acted on the "Snowden leaks", WAY before they came out; ALL code is suspect now that the revelation IS out! We need do an entire overhaul of all code to open source! It will not guarantee we won't get cracked, but at least we can keep an eye on it , if we band together and standardize the code! Of course, now that the wide world of the web is not under one domain source control now, we can see chaos in the near future - but it was headed that way anyway - I'm sure of it!
SATANIC 'HELL DIAMOND' tells of sunless subterranean sea
Sunday 16th March 2014 02:13 GMT
Re: Sounds like
Exactly what I thought. Now they could remake a new movie version a completely different way, and I'd get excited about seeing such a story again! It was one of the few, I thought was dead until now! I'm a huge Jules Verne fan! Funny how gravity gets neutralized more and more as you go to the center. Water is completely incompressible, and has many powerful properties that could change into a state of matter we don't even understand at that depth. It is fun to boggle the mind once more! :O
Behold, the TITCHY T-REX that prowled the warm Arctic of long ago
Sunday 16th March 2014 01:55 GMT 
There's evidence that...
there were periods of global warming before humans too. And actually there was a time when parts of either South America and/or Antarctica poked into the present polar region, and although it got really dark part of the year, was so warm there was jungle then too. This intersected one of the warming periods. The dinos were generally smaller but had huge orbital size for their eye sockets - hence the theory - although geology also confirms much about the weather and plate tectonics position at any time-frame in earth history.
UK.gov to train up 11-year-old cyberwarriors
Noooo... WAIT. Google slaps on Chrome patches ahead of Pwn2Own hackfest
Google encrypts Chinese search requests to subvert Great Firewall
Sunday 16th March 2014 00:38 GMT 
Google would be better off...
Using the bot net for dissenters in China, as that is the only way they are going to communicate without government consent. I'm sure the ones getting away with it, operate much like the criminals that compromised Target. There are still no indications they on on the trail of any of those players, except maybe the coder for the malware involved. That saying, it could have been cracked by nation backed players anyway. Dalai Lama dissenters are the most advanced - obfuscating their communications with TOR or other P2P, and then handing it off to a local bot herder.
Security: It's knowing what you don't know
Enterprising French chap cranks up €100k 'flying car'
Health boffins say wind turbines don't make you sick
US boffins turn up the spin on holographic memory
Dr Hurricane unleashes FUSION POWER at Livermore nuke lab
Credit card of PayPal PRESIDENT cloned by UK crooks
Thursday 13th February 2014 05:16 GMT
Yeah - if only Chip-N-Pin!!!
I get SOOOoo tired of hearing that!! - VISA is supposedly forcing the issue in North America so my rant is probably a waste of time, but for the expense of converting the entire quadrant of our globe we get something that has already been hacked - several times. Is it REALLY worth it??
February 2008
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-711.pdf
February 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/susanwatts/2010/02/new_flaws_in_chip_and_pin_syst.html
February 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511710.stm
September 2012
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/unattack.pdf
Video summary of above report
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19559124
I hope we are smarter than that and adopt something like a combination of MagnePrint®, which cannot be replayed, and whose infrastructure is basically already there with slightly different hardware POS tech, and also Pass Window, which is a much cheaper, but highly scalable 3rd factor authentication technology.
OK, Mr. President, those cybersecurity guidelines you ordered are HERE
'Wind power causes climate change' shown to be so much hot air
Wednesday 12th February 2014 07:17 GMT 
Every meteorologist knows..
that upper atmospheric factors are the true predictor of weather. I can't see how the public can't be getting extremely tired of these pathetic whiners! Good grief! This is as bad as complaining that gopher farts will cause earthquakes!! Just plain out and out STUPID!
Now to temper my rant, I will admit that in a chaotic system anything can trigger change, but so many factors trigger so many changes as to be utterly insane to contemplate! These kind of public statement only do damage to serious climatology, and serve to dull the attention of folks who used to be concerned over climate, but now feel Chicken Little is guarding the hen house!
Run for the tills! Malware infected Target registers, slurped 40m bank cards
Virgin Galactic's supersonic space ship in 71,000-ft record smash
Sabu wasn't the only FBI mole in LulzSec, suggest leaked docs
Target's database raided, 70 MILLION US shoppers at risk of ID theft
Monday 13th January 2014 08:32 GMT
Re: "...unencrypted..."
"In order for it to be siphoned unencrypted, it has to have been DEcrypted at some point. Last I checked, the point of the PCI-DSS rules was to make it so that AT NO POINT does that occur until it reaches the clearinghouse where the data has to be decrypted as a matter of procedure (because they're authorized agents of the credit card companies). The data is supposed to be encrypted at the magstripe reader (like how ATM keypads encrypt at the keypad), using a key provided by the clearinghouse so that it goes from the PIN pad to the register, to the back office, and from there to the clearinghouse without it being altered or decrypted."
Yeah! BUTT!(misspelled on purpose!) - We have not the full facts on just what happened on this debacle now! - have we? I challenge anyone to show a link where a definitive answer is provided!.
I really wonder if even "Chip 'N Pin will cure this huge breach. Latest news says it is more like 140 + MELLION!!! As the REG is want to say. HA!
Circuits so flexible they'd wrap around your hair
Thursday 9th January 2014 05:09 GMT
Re: You might still look like an idiot
Oh well! We will be driven around by robots, so we won't need to worry about crashing. I saw a show today about Nissan announcing that they will be selling robot cars in the US - I assume if it is approved, that is! This will be very soon, they showed one of them driving around with no driver or human on board at all. Maybe they can make a Segway like that so we don't walk off cliffs and stuff! HA! We all will be moving around with our heads in the clouds(or up our duffs) very soon! :D
Dusty old supernova could reveal answer to life, the universe and EVERYTHING
Wednesday 8th January 2014 08:19 GMT
Hmmm?
I wasn't aware that any red giant had the mass to collapse into a supernova! I wonder if the media are doing their homework? From what I remember, a red giant is just a star close to our Sol in original mass, but expanding as the fuel runs out, then collapsing into a smaller object, although I don't remember what. The stellar shell, or what is left of the outer gasses is blown off, but not in any way as exciting as a "supernova". :/
Biting the hand that feeds IT
