Posts by Cipher 463 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Dec 2012
This article and comments thread reminds me why I need to stop reading Mr. Potts:
The rape analogy would get many people fired, most commentards on hand moderation and is plain ridiculous. The asshole remark surely would...
Potts seems to be the only author that feels the need to write very long articles, followed by multiple incursions into the comments to use gratutitous language to defend every single point he makes in nit pick style.
Shame too, sometimes he makes good points...
Golf.
In his time in office he has spent 800+ hours on the golf course, and in a world of perils, only 600 odd hours in his security briefings.
The man knows how to pay back those who shovel money to him and his party: in this case he appoints Comcast to lead the FCC...
"why are you blaming Obama for this?"
In addition to appointing Comcast to guard the henhouse, he is being disingenous abot not being able to do anything.
If he can circumvent the U.S. Congress with his Executive Orders, which he openly brags about, what impediment is an agency that reports to him?
Whenever something goes wrong, and you can check this, Obama swears he knew nothing until the press covered it and he swears "I'll get to the bottom of this, this is unacceptable." This routine rings hollow, except with the 39% who approve of him.
His statement is a wink, wink, nod, nod to Big Telco: Don't worry fellas, you'll get what you want. Like he told Putin, "Just wait 'till after the elections."
Downvote away folks, but come January Obama and Big Telco get what they want...
"how likely is it that Comcast would pursue anything if he didn't say something first?"
And how likely is it that PWC made the statement they made without hearing the tape wherein the beancounter said something to the effect of:
"Do you know who I am? I work at PWC, I'm important and I can reign down hell on Comcast if you don't kiss my ring and resolve this to *my* satisfaction."
No love for Comcast here, but this may a case of a jerk getting what he deserved...
...but in addition to no admin rights for users, how about no browser unless the needs of the business specificaly require them? Use the hosts file to control where they go on top of that.
The university I last worked at (2000+ staff users) had such a policy. Need software outside the image provided set? Request it. A WUS, delayed to allow testing, pushed updates/patches.
The overwhelming majority of users had no need of a browser to get their work done. So why put a malware vector on the machine to start with?
And when the crying starts, remind them they are there to work, not play, and the browser is used for far more play than work in most settings...
...the internet routes around damage
Now that we know what the NSA and the 5 eyes are up to, people are working on solutions.
We know they intercept kit and modify it, so people examine said kit.
The use of Tails Live CDs at wifi hotspots can be effective.
Apple and Google are making good moves.
More people today know what a "warrant canary" is...
We can win this fight. If we fight...
Kevin Toppins' take on systemd:
systemd does appear to be a cancer on *nix, I will not install a distro that uses it...
My reality is that a combination of keyboard shortcuts *and* mouse use is best.
I grab a chunk of text with the mouse, CTRL C/CTRL V from the keyboard for example. Some apps support selecting and moving text with the mouse, which can be done at least as fast as using the keyboard.
This Mouse vs. CLI thing is more emacs vs. vi fanboi nonsense, people work with the tools they like and are comfortable with, a few seconds saved here and there is bean counter false economy...
I was shown how to change directories and the dir command to list the contents thereof.
It was one of the great moments when I hit upon dir /w to make the output more readable on the green on black screen...
I make an analogy to driving cars in my mind, the "old guy" who taught me to drive made the point that steering an automatic transmission car wasn't real driving, one needed to change the gears manually for best control on different surfaces and angles of grade.
Mice are nice, but until you use the command line, play under the hood, you really don't understand what the machine can do or what it *is* doing...
What about the bugs MS never gets around to fixing?
I speak of the one where you must refresh the desktop to see renamed/moved folders. Or the one where you cannot save certain file types to the desktop.
Literally thousands of post webwide on these two, and MS always says "boot to safe mode and check for malware." It happens on new installs not internet connected...
Or the deliberate trashing of features that require 3rd party apps to reinstate - ShellFolderFix is a big one.
This doesn't even touch the borkings that automatic updates cause, there was ablue screen one a few weeks ago.
I have one XP box and one Win 7 box left. When they die I will be finished with MS.
Parting shot: UEFI/Secure Boot. How clever of you to get the OEMs to do your dirty work there...
When FBI director Comey says "...above the law.", I'm left wondering exactly what law he is referring to. Maybe Holder could elucidate on his way out...
IANAL, but I would think that the Fifth Amendment regarding self incrimination is in play here. Have they implemented Constitution 2.0 removing that pesky Bill of Rights?
Even sans Apple/Google's new encryption scheme, if a suspected pedo has encrypted pictures on his/her phone, what is the legal basis for forcing them to give up the keys?
If the only evidence of crime lies on a phone, the police aren't doing there jobs. They need to get out and find/stop this stuff in the non-digital world, where the crimes against children originate.
Not living in the UK...
"the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is."
" However, that same million spread among the middle class buys 2000 fridges, keeping a whole factory of workers and their suppliers working."
Finally someone sez, sorta, what the core issue is here:
Who do we take money from to give to others? How much do we take? Do we set an amount above which no one can keep another unit of money?
Will this apply equally to all? Will the movie stars and sports heroes also be forced to a limit? Special exemptions for the politically connected based on need? Will some people's income caps be more equal than others?
Politicians make these appeals for income equality/redistribution based on the average voter's propensity to vote their self interest, taking from the rich to give them more has appeal and keeps politicians in power.
The question really is "By what moral authority do we take legal earnings from one group to give to another?"
For all the noble bleatings these appeals make, we are talking about "from each according to ability and to each according to need." It won't work today, it will result in a larger gap just as it has in the past. It merely changes who the elites will be. If you think crony capitalim is bad, try living under crony communism. And forget any notion that "This time we'll get it right", we won't...
Let us call these plans and notions what they are, the idea that some have the right to take and give what they didn't produce. Put the altruistic platitudes aside and defend this theft...
"That inequality between countries is dropping is nice, but has none of the positive effects on society which reduced inequality within a country does: reduced crime, reduced mortality, reduced child mortality, reduced unrest, increased trust, increased well-being, increased longevity."
Assumes facts not in evidence.
That said:
If the top 20 % of earners, who btw pay north of 80% of all taxes in the US, had every dime confiscated from them and redistributed, it wouldn't make any significant difference in equality.
If the goal is to raise all ships, then hitting the rich isn't gonna get it done. What might get it done is to draw substantially more from a pool of people with enough members to make a difference, the middle class. This would have the effect of lowering most people's boats.
If the goal is to punish the rich, the idea has merit. I don't care for this approach, rich people have always kept me employed at good salary through the years. Me and many others, say the middle class...
...we discovered FM radio and "progressive rock" in the early 70's, and, with some not so cheap kit, began recording these rather long offerings to tape.
Pink Floyd, ELP, Moody Blues, Procul Harem...
We were rather hard on our brothers and sisters still clinging to AM radio or playing 8 tracks, "Commercial" music was the derisive term we tagged that stuff with. Later we denigrated it as "Pop."
The Times They Be a Changing...
That said, streaming has no value to me. I listen to my CDs in the house, in the truck or on a portable player if necessary.
I often hear "Hey Gramps, aren't those CDs heavy to drag around for a man your age."
Whippersnappers...
tom dial:
"The person may have a natural right to encrypt the data and refuse to act to decrypt it, but the government has the authority and power, under some circumstances, to punish him for that refusal."
And the 5th Amendment, for us Americans, means what?
Are you saying that the Constitutional right NOT to incriminate oneself is now void?
Switch providers? Where do you live that there is more than one broadband provider?
Maybe in a few extremely high density areas, but in the US, I'd guess north of 90% of folks have no choice for high speed. Your choice is TW, Comcast, or Cox (whichever one has the monoply rights to your area) who do not compete against whatever DSL offering you find at a tenth the speed.
I could go for a multi tiered internet IF their was some real competition. Sadly that doesn't exist for most of us...
Science: Steady State
Religion: Georges Lemaître, French priest, convinces Hubble and Einstein of Big Bang Theory. He is later awarded the Francqui Prize in Belgium, the highest honour for a scientist in the country, with Einstein and Eddington among his proposers and judges respectively.
...lie not in economic theory, but rather in ourselves.
In the aggregate we vote for people to put in place programs that make government, the least qualified enity, our caretakers. We wish to avoid the pain of doing without the latest shiny object, so we let government administer our retirements rather than saving on our own. They can never deliver on their promises or fullfill our desires...
When we spill the hot coffee in our lap, we refuse to accept responsibilty, we engage lawyers to make someone else pay. To increase our odds of winning, we elect lawyers to pass laws that make sure we can win these cases, the lawyers are happy to oblige for 33% of the take.
Society today is the Tragedy of the Commons populated with the tradesmen of Kafka's "An Old Manuscript."
"The salvation of our fatherland is left to us craftmen and tradespeople, but we are not equal to such a task, nor indeed have we ever claimed to be capable of it. This is a misunderstanding, and it is proving the ruin of us."
Today one must assume that all traffic is being sniffed at a minimum. I suspect that metadata from every conceivable source is being slurped, and most of the actual content is stored for analysis on demand.
If you value your privacy start with that asumption and work forward...
They lie because they wish to conceal the truth that their data dragnets have little to do with terrorism.
They have much more to do with "regular" criminal activity and political suppression of opponents along with a self preservation instinct that requires them to have terrorists to keep funding levels on the rise...
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