Typos
Are your sub-editors on strike or are you using Office 365 for your spell check? For an 'article' that is just cut-and-paste from a press release, the writing is as bad as I have ever seen on el-reg.
533 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jul 2007
The breach was 'through' an email server, not 'of' an email server, and if their company was anything like mine, in one, in all. As for worrying about 5M/min and the time taken to move terabytes, I call BS. Any top company is going to have better then 50M/sec and if you do much international video conferencing, as I expect they do, then 500M/sec is not unreasonable.
If I were the hacker, I would look at creating an AWS storage and backup account in the targets name and run regular backups to it. No reason for the companies IT department to be suspicious and 3TB would cost less then $2000.
"The documents landed first at German outlet Sueddeutsche Zeitung last year".
Last year! Why has it taken so long for any mention of it to be released? Could it be that the actual guilty parties have been given a chance to clean up their act? David Cameron's daddy was a bit naughty, but was David really that squeaky clean? How about Blair or Sarkozy, Chirac or Merkel. I don't care about Putin as I expect him to be bent, but I would love to know about the Clintons and Trumps of this world.
Why is there any surprise that they brought it in house? They require a physical storage for lots of infrequently accessed data. That requires infrastructure and costs no matter who physically controls it so they either pay some one else enough to make a profit doing it or pay for it themselves and keep the profit someone else would make.
"if the lift came from downwash..." but it doesn't come from downwash, does it? Any object being pushed through the air with a positive aspect ratio will push the air it displaces down and forwards. The reaction is up (lift) and back (drag). The pressure differences at different parts of the wings surface are not the cause of the lift, they are a consequence of it.
"it's fair to say that the majority of law-abiding citizens would want prosecutors to be able to access evidence that could help convict someone of a serious crime, regardless of how strongly they feel about their own personal privacy."
No it is not fair to say that. It would be fair to say that citizens object strongly to innocent citizens having their rights violated, whether by criminals or by the criminal justice system. It would also be fair to say that citizens expect investigators to follow a trail of evidence to its logical conclusions, remembering at all times that all citizens are innocent until proven otherwise. If, and only if sufficient evidence warrants it, should prosecutors consider bringing criminal charges. Does this mean that some criminals will get away with it? Yes. That is one of the prices to be paid for living in a fair and honest civilization. The alternative approach, which is to assume that everyone (you included) is a criminal, has been tried many times, and has failed every time.
About a wheel barrows worth by my reckoning, possibly closer to a hat box in official El Reg measures. My Pi 2 box (still waiting for my three to arrive) was 3.5x7.5x12cm or 315cm volume. 1285 of them would have a volume of 404775 cubic cm or a cube of 74cm per side (about 2'6" x 2'6" x 2'6").
Sorry, but I have to call BS on this one. Nowhere that requires you to 'hike' in requires fancy AV manipulation. Bring a modern smartphone instead and record your photos, video and audio (and get free GPS and communications thrown in) and do the AV processing when you get back to civilization. Saying the Pi can't do it because it only has 1GB is like saying Google is a useless search engine because it doesn't know where you left your keys.
I had a quick glance at the US constitution and I couldn’t see anything about being protected from murder. Nor did I see anything to gives potential or unnamed victims supremacy over my rights. In fact, the fourth amendment was pretty explicit about what must be done before my rights can be violated and stopping a murder (which this case is not about) is not on the list.
No, that was genuine production code. Of course the sample was simplified! The original was a header file defining the offsets on an IBM 3270 terminal emulator input form that was used as the interface between two major but utterly incompatible banking systems. You couldn't hard code the values the way you suggested for the obvious reason that the position of a field was dependent on the fields that came before! It only became a problem when subtraction was used get from the known position of a prompt to the end of the previous input to determine its length. I didn't design or write it, but I had to fix it and I had never been caught out by bracketing in #defines before. The fact that I can still remember that one so clearly after all these years is a little scary.
A light on the dash board to say you have a problem is (IMHO) better then a kill switch that someone else operates. If you have ever had a car cut out on you while in the overtaking lane of a busy motorway, you will know why it is not always a good idea to let someone else decide when to withdraw service. In my case, the ECU decided that an oxygen sensor might be faulty (it wasn't) so it killed the engine. Not fun.
Was your write up on the valve issue and Bigelows part in it (which made up over half the article) cut and pasted from the book or just interesting(?) fun facts that you felt like sharing? It would be more appropriate as part of an article on computer history or old technology, but it has no place in a book review, don't you think?
I am curious to know in what ways you think one is inferior/superior to the other. After twenty years as a corporate Windows user I have spent the last year using an Ubuntu machine. I cant using voting buttons on emails anymore (unless I use the web front end) and it is more difficult to join Lync online meetings. In every other sense (including the number of calls to the help desk) I would have to say my experience has been as good or better.
Doing something is only better then doing nothing if it is actually helpful. The money, time and resources being spent on this unworkable idea are money, time and resources that are not being spent on actually helping children. At its very best, if everything works properly and all the technical and legal issues are overcome, then a small number of computer illiterates who share old kiddy porn will be stopped. Or at least slowed down.
Not one child will be protected from being exploited.
Not one image will be taken out of circulation.
Not one image will be prevented from getting into circulation.
One final technical point. If the technology actually worked as advertised, why isn't it being exploited by people who could make profit from it? Where are the hundreds of millions of legitimate and copyrighted images that are being illegally used that this technology should be able to track down? Why aren't the courts being backed up with claims for compensation for provable copyright infringements? The licence fees alone for this technology should be able to fund major child protection efforts.
The threat of this approach might deter the computer illiterate but then Darwin was already looking after people who try sharing kiddie porn via facebook.
First off, how is this hash to be generated? Will google et al calculate a hash for every image before it can be uploaded and simply not accept (sight unseen) anything that produces a hash they don't like? The first time you cant upload your holiday snaps will be the last time you use their service, so that is not a runner. Any hash will have to be calculated after upload, which means the company is now in possession of the suspect image. In most jurisdictions, possession of kiddy porn (knowingly or otherwise) is a serious criminal offence and I am not sure if safe harbour rules apply if the company is aware of the content.
What happens when a matching hash is detected? Do they send the 'suspect' image to someone else to verify? In which case they will be knowingly participating in the transport and distribution of what they believe to be kiddy porn across state and national boundaries! Try explaining that to the company lawyers.
Perhaps they have a human verify the image before they alert the authorities? In which case they must have paid employees looking at kiddy porn on company computers, on company time, with the companies knowledge and worse, consent! I wonder how HR will fill that vacancy. "Wanted: child porn expert, equal opportunity employeer"
If you are serious about stopping child exploitation, then stop this techno bullshit and actively support genuine child protection organisations.
OK, we know he was thick, but can someone explain to me how the so called justice system entertained a prosecution and conviction for crimes that were not committed? And just how thick (or otherwise motivated) was the defence to not ask that judge why the accused was being accused of something that didn't happen.
The point is to learn.
The dynamics and engineering of such a simple machine as a motorbike is stunningly complex, and most things are done the way they are because they work, not because we understand why they work. If they can get this 'bot to lap a circuit consistently, then they can objectively measure the consequence of change, and that will allow innovation to leap forward.
The outriggers mean the robot doesn't have to put its feet down when it stops, and they make mistakes a lot less expensive. Look up the skid-bike at the superbike school to see how they work. At a guess, in the future they will become extendible.
This is a very clever attack on Honda, who also make bikes, and robots, but don't do anything as exciting as a robot riding a bike. Disclaimer - I ride a Yamaha :)
Why is it so impossible to be honest about agile? Is it the religious overtones of having a manifesto that make it a belief structure rather then a development paradigm ?
"Agile allows us to create efficient metrics, openness and accountability." Really?
"Having red hair allows us to create efficient metrics, openness and accountability."
Well, it doesn't completely prevent us, but it certainly does not help us.
In a small outfit, where there is only one team and the task is basically mono-skilled then your agile teams can work as described but do not, IMHO, actually promote it. The real advantage of agile over waterfall is the frequent reality check of demoing to the end-user and the resulting feedback. This comes at the cost of not designing a solution before developing it.
Once the job requires more then one team, then the SM is the only channel of communication out of the team so your openness goes out the window. Metrics that only become meaningful when the team has done half a dozen sprints with no changes in skills, tasks and personnel are not, IMHO, exactly stable, useful or predictive. And 'accountability' that is based on an SM's ability to guilt less productive team members with no external checks or balances does not sound like the traditional ideal of productive teamwork.
Additionally, the active dis-incentive to up-skilling caused by metrics that punish activity that is not instantly productive and the lack of career progression caused by hiding talented people behind scrum masters does not encourage job-satisfaction or a willingness to go the extra mile. Agile has a place in software development, but it is not the be all and end all that it is often made out to be.
I always thought that the first great human invention was abstract thought. The ability to think of things not necessary for immediate survival leads to the ability to think of time, as in the past, present and most importantly, the future, and that allows the ability to plan ahead. Sharing a plan with others makes hunting much more productive leads to language. Planned hunts mean traps become possible, if not inevitable, and that leads to tool usage. The ability to plan, communicate and make tools makes agriculture possible. With more effective hunting, and even more so with agriculture, society can maintain sections of the population who are not directly productive. Lets call them wasters. The first wasters would be good at planning and/or leading. Others could add value by entertaining, as with storey tellers, artists and musicians, which in turn gave us a sense of what came before and learning by the experience of others. And less useful members of society such as politicians, crooks, the infirm and dreamers. Most of whom contributed absolutely nothing. However, one dreamer in ten thousand turns a fire into a forge or a kiln and suddenly society becomes richer and can afford even more dreamers. All the other great inventions derive from the human ability to have abstract thoughts.
P.S. I think the Dewey decimal environment trumps RDBMS but I could be biased.
And there in lies the problem.
Instead of just saying that you think the USB3 sub-system should be better, you are making personal attacks on a person it is safe to assume you have never met.
If you really think the USB3 sub-system should be better then it currently is, then why don't you fuck off and make it better then it currently is?
Abusive is about the person and not what they did. It is never useful or productive.
She's a pussy - abusive because it is about her. He's a 'tard - abusive because it is about him. She's lovely - potentially abusive because it is about her even though it could be considered complimentary. It really is getting very close to 'she is a great fuck' which is clearly abusive.
That code is f*cking shit - robust but not abusive because it is not about the person. The kernel group considers abusive behaviour acceptable and that is why I and a great many people I know have no interest in participating. If you want to call my code shit. That is fine, but you had better be able to defend your position. If you want to call me shit, you can fuck off.
It is hard to know if you are being serious or facetious. Assuming for a moment that you are being serious, then you are completely entitled to your opinion and I agree that collaboration and information exchange are the future, but that is not mutually exclusive with respecting privacy. A simple example will explain my case: I want to buy a present for my wife, advertisers know my tastes and budgets as well as hers and so can suggest the perfect present. Cool, collaboration and exchange working well as I get what I want and they get a sale. But if the privacy of my transaction is not respected and she finds out about it before the day so ruining the surprise, then whoever betrayed that privacy will earn some serious negative reputation.
Dark-web deadbeats
perverts
unmasking the scumbag
unspeakable images.
nefarious purposes
Rather emotive language, don't you think?
Given that we are talking about a country that had a shit fit over Janet Jacksons left nipple, and given that the article implies that the FBI probably has details on over 200,000 TOR users from this site alone, I have to ask if the author is actually a shill for a US three letter outfit that would like to discourage the use of TOR and other secure communications services by any body except themselves.
No more Arab Spring. No more Snowden. Of course it also means there could never be another Watergate.
Yes kiddy fiddling is a very bad thing, but no, it is not worth giving up your right to a private life, or giving free reign to governments to dictate what they think is good for you.