* Posts by elDog

1115 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2013

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

elDog

The word is out - TOR is compromised!

I'm seeing some random mentions that the NSA (or NORKS or Mensheviks or whatever) have figured out how to intercept all traffic.

Now, this may be a dis-information campaign to push everyone onto AOL or a honeypot to get everyone to read the article and get Pooh-Beared. But still, don't trust anything you read on the internets, or especially here!

FCC revises router update rules after outcry

elDog

More like caught in field with pants dropped around ankles

And tells the press that he was just testing the speed with which a brown object falls to earth.

Next time he'll do it in the woods.

Multinationals hiding more than half a trillion from G20 tax collectors

elDog

Re: WOW! SUCH TAX LOSS! MUCH ABSENCE OF STATE GLITTER!

Very clever. You were really talking about the Queen's jewels but managed to hide it into war budgets.

But seriously, how will we pay to get the crown polished?

Edge joins Explorer in bumper crop of security patches

elDog

It's hard to have an original comment about the drip/dribble/stream of updates from MS/Adobe

So I won't even try.

Isn't Edge supposed to be so bleeding "edge" that it has left all the poor coding practices that MS practices in the dust?

No such luck with poor Adobe. Same old, same old.

I do wonder about the push to move all the Win7/8 users to this wonderful new Win-XI platform. Looking like some isolated VMs running on a solid OS is the way to tame these beasts.

Three men indicted over JPMorgan Chase megahack

elDog

Hate to say it, but this is a very disjointed article.

I realize that reading Mr. Martin's earlier article gives much more background but still some of the details could have been included here, also.

What does the JPM chart show that is relevant to this article? If there is something it should be pointed out. Also the HBR (Harvard Business Review) segment seemed somewhat non-sequitorial.

Drones are dropping drugs into prisons and the US govt just doesn't know what to do

elDog

Although if they are as expensive as a 1 minute phone call from prison, even you couldn't afford it.

elDog

Re: How about...

Would you like to be a guard bending over in a prison yard?

elDog

Interesting idea. However I think a lot of the wardens and officers are on the take

Might take out the whole damn hierarchy!

elDog

Re: Move the prisions

No, there are plenty of totally uninhabited spots in the Atlantic (and Pacific/etc.)

Most of the (US sponsored) dictatorships from South America started building reefs to hold their undesirables. Unfortunately the reefs were still 2-3km underwater when the choppers left the bones of the disappeared.

elDog

Re: What about non-crims?

I'm guessing you're not talking about the prison staff, administrators, local and state legislators. These supporters of the US Prison-Industrial-Political-Military Complex (USPIPMC) are regularly recipients of drop shipments from various sources. Usually in untraceable funds.

elDog

Or, perhaps criminalise everyone?

Nice little microchips implanted in several vital spots upon birth? If removed instant death.

I have a couple of dogs that are convinced that wearing a few different "stimulation" collars is a GOOD THING. They know that 73% of the time we'll go for a walk in the woods.

The other 40-90% of the time (depending) they may get a little reminder (usually a buzz but sometimes electro-shock) that I don't appreciate their behaviour (barking at the mailman, licking their nethers, etc.)

This tiny bit of correction seems to have taken a lot of the wildness out of their lives.

Now, my wife has done the same so I better shoot this off befor....

elDog

Re: Bounty idea sounds good to me.

Most prisons are (or were) built in low-density, low-income areas. Imagine the northwoods of New York where the biggest birds of prey are the mosquitoes and the employment opportunities are close to miniscule.

Skeet shooting is a luxury because those clay pigeons cost money. Some backwoodsman with a knack for packing shot and black powder into a shotgun shell would be really happy to get $5 per bird.

elDog

Re: Kaboom

And that's NOT the Winner! Easy Answers aren't what THEY want!

THEY want expensive, militarized and ineffective Answers! How else will they pay for their other toys?

elDog

The problem is that prisons are mainly two-dimensional

We have long relied on the fact that most two-legged animals can only traverse easily in the x and y directions. Once you add the z component (digging tunnels or jumping over fences) the fences become less effective. Of course you can increase the height/depth of the fence but it doesn't eliminate the ability to fly something higher or dig a tunnel deeper.

Totally enclosed (x*y*z) would work in these three dimensions as it mainly did in the Truman Show. However the barriers can still be breached over time (t).

For the best protection the inmates would need to encapsulated in a total x*y*z*t shield. Some type of suspended animation might work but would be very expensive for the US prisoner population (the largest in the world.) I can't think a another ultimate solution.

ProtonMail DDoS wipeout: Day 6. Yes, we're still under attack

elDog

Re: In all fairness to Protonmail.....

It could have been a misreading on my part, but I was going on this text from the article:

Late last week the company paid a bitcoin ransom worth £3,500. A company statement explained:

We hoped that by paying, we could spare the other companies impacted by the attack against us, but the attacks continued nevertheless. This was clearly a wrong decision so let us be clear to all future attackers – ProtonMail will NEVER pay another ransom.

elDog

Re: In all fairness to Protonmail.....

Haven't I just read on ElReg a recent article on CryptoLocker4 which appears to be even more malicious than the original? The part that caused the sack to pucker was CL's ability to wait in hiding for months, slowly encrypting files so that even the ones on backups may be useless. Clever!

In that article there were quite a few really decent comments about how to put critical resources (files/folders) on ZFS or other external file systems and establish very strong control of Read/Write access. If you MUST use Windows, just let the user's Desktop be held hostage.

Read the Economist last weekend? You may have fetched more than just articles (yup, malware)

elDog

For the venerable El Econ to be infected means the world as they know it if coming to an end.

I'm not really trying to be funny, and I expect I didn't succeed. But what this implies is that every time we shake the hand of someone out in internet-land we should immediately get out the wipes. Probably too late in any case.

Perhaps we should run every copy of our personal computers (tablets, phones, whatevers) as one-offs. Ready to wipe several times a day. Refreshed with virgins (non-sexed) every few hours. Of course, no one knows where those virgins have been before becoming our new best friends.

Top FBI lawyer: You win, we've given up on encryption backdoors

elDog

Ahhh. They've mastered Spooky Surveillance At A Distance (SSAAD

Since all those little electrons flitting about now have a counterpart in the mega-giga-biga spying centers, everything you own is also theirs, Encryption, privacy, keys? Fools. Sleep well tonight, friends.

Condi Rice, ICANN, and millions paid to lobby the US govt for total internet control

elDog

I wondered why DropBox got Condosleeza Rice on their Board of Directors

Now we know why. If you're going to be a major player in the new Internet($$$) you need some powerful lobbyists.

'I posted winning race ticket in Facebook selfie ... and someone stole it!'

elDog

Obviously intelligence is not involved in either betting or boasting.

However, enjoy your fun and the lesson. And a chicken dinner can be had for around 6$AU.

CPS fined £200k over theft of laptops holding 'sensitive interviews'

elDog

Same as any action against a US entity

The perps don't have to pay for their perpitrude. They may get an enhanced vacation called "administrative leave with pay."

The perps bosses never get hauled into court and asked to donate a few $thousands to undo the injustice. On up the chain.

Sometimes, the perps local hiring authority (city, town, state) may be required to adjust accounts but this is just coming out of the taxpayers' hides.

I don't know how this would work, but I'd propose a totally different system.

1. You get a minmal salary (US $9/hour) for the first year.

2. You get a bonus at the end of the year if you did a pretty good job.

3. You got a BIG bonus after five years if your whole department did well.

This would apply to congress-things, presidents, school-board presidents, governors, police, teachers, etc.

As it is, any Jack or Jill can totally fuck the populace and have no personal repercussions.

Microsoft Windows 7 Pro: Halloween Horror for PC makers next year

elDog

Re: Old news

Much better link - good conversations. Also don't forget to check out this thread about MS shoving 10 down its "customer"'s throats:

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/28/microsoft-intensifies-data-collection-on-windows-7-and-8-systems/

CSC, NetCracker IT staff worked on US military telecoms 'without govt security clearance'

elDog

Qui tam is a powerful weapon under the False Claims Act

From wikipedia: Its name is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur, meaning "[he] who sues in this matter for the king as well as for himself."

Surprisingly the USofA hasn't disabled it as it has many whistle-blower protections since it is really anti big business.

However, who knows what will happen to this fine gentleman - I hope he can enjoy the fruits for awhile.

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

elDog

Please don't damn me! I do have a Windows base for my Linux VMs

And I wouldn't even have it running underneath except I had already paid for the license.

Perhaps exiting back to the "bare metal" Window (7) OS is what the old-timers used to say was like getting one of those consolating windows, you know 24x80 with pretty black and white?

No, not seriously. I do have a Win 10 VM and can't stand the flat bits and the much worse Start menu. Yes everything can be adjusted, but WTF should I have to do this on my 1920x1200 screen - it ain't a tablet or touch screen.

Stoopid!

WoW! Want to beat Microsoft's Windows security defenses? Poke some 32-bit software

elDog

I call foul. You require two rarely used-together malware-magnets: Windows and Adobe xxx

Who would ever run these things at the same time? And still have their jobs?

CSC, NetCracker IT staff worked on US military telecoms 'without govt security clearance'

elDog

Hey, nothing that a nice dinner with a few bundles of cash can't resolve.

There is so little oversight by really independent groups that thievery is now the norm.

I'm in the fine USofA. I don't know about you folks in other countries. But I think I know very well that only the soddiest of the sods report cash transactions.

In some countries even the supposed employees expect to get paid by special perks.

Not terribly illustrative, but our new US Speaker of the House gets lots of family leave time etc that he won't allow his minions to enjoy.

Old, not obsolete: IBM takes Linux mainframes back to the future

elDog

Give me about 20 minutes to become familiar with each acronym

And then I'll post my resume on the webs.

WTF, even MVS/MVM weren't mentioned? VM360?

How about TSR (Sidekick).

Oh well, I think my old skills aren't in alignment anymore.

Think Fortran, assembly language programming is boring and useless? Tell that to the NASA Voyager team

elDog

Re: Replace technology drudgery by automated life-cycle convention

I doubt they're really hiring. More of a slow week at Popular Mechanics (and elReg.)

But it's fun thinking about being the hero that rode in to save the day! Y2K away!

elDog

Don't forget the BUNCH

Burroughs, Unisys, NEC, CDC, Honeywell - anything but IBM.

And then when Honeywell and Fairchild were bought out, "Fair Well, Sweet HoneyChild."

Burroughs was, to my recollection, the first company to actually make a commercial computer that used virtual memory.

God this is all so much fun. I hope it keeps on going until my dying day.

Microsoft scares the bejesus out of Skype users with x12 price hike

elDog

Testing the waters? My first thought also.

However it is more common for these megacorps to just change the rates w/o notification. You did read the fine print, didn't you?

The poor intern who made that erroneous change will be rewarded somewhere. Maybe s/he'll be able to spend an eternity with Steve Ballmer.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller special: The WHO bacon sarnie of death

elDog

+1 only for your name, Mr. Cupid Stunts.

I bet you haven't even tried it. Well except for most of that bottle of fine spirits.

Fuming Google tears Symantec a new one over rogue SSL certs

elDog

"The real power is with the OS/Browser"

"The real power is with the OS/Browser as they ultimately decide which authorities they are going to trust or not." - bingo!

And that is a weak link since the software can be dirty. I don't know how all the add-ons for Firefox, Chrome, etc. work but it wouldn't surprise me if some snooping and fiddling with message packets wouldn't be possible at that level, let alone infecting the browser itself.

European Parliament votes to grant Snowden protection from US

elDog

Snowden is smart enough to let this work its way through the sausage-making process

It will continue to be a feather in Putin's hunting cap that he allowed Ed to have "safe harbor" in the land of bears. I do expect the rest of the civilized world (excepting the 5-Eyes) to protect the rights of whistle-blowers and other people of true conscience.

However, the agents of countries that may be upset at this do have means such as poisoned umbrellas and polonium to make anyone's life rather short and uncomfortable.

Now, Julian - do you have your bag packed?

Northrop wins $55bn contract for next-gen bomber – as America says bye-bye to B-52

elDog

Re: Crew

@MondoMan - I'll accept your explanation at face value.

The first reason that came to my mind for having crew on board was to have someone to blame if the nuklear weapon were to be dropped on the wrong city, the wrong country. Can't be blaming the upper chain of command, can we?

Flickering screens turn Microsoft Surface Books into Microsoft Surface paperweights

elDog

Wait a month (or six)? You gotta be kidding me!

I need my bling and I need it now!

Besides, if I wait there may be something newer and better and I'll have to make a new choice.

When does this nightmare ever end?

'Govt will not pass laws to ban encryption' – Baroness Shields

elDog

Re: Just how clueless are these people?

A pretty face in front of a useless brain?

elDog

You have 10 fingernails? Fancy losing each one, slowly?

Most of us, and me most quickly, will divulge the necessary information if the "law" really wants it.

I also think that whatever the GCHQ or NSA or whatever can do to break existing encryption, there are plenty of smart people who can do add-on/tiered techniques that might fry the cores of their colossi.

US Senate approves CISA cyber-spy-law, axes privacy safeguards

elDog

Bend over, citizens

And spread your cheeks.

I can't wait until some of the clueless U.S.of.A legislators (mainly republican) get caught up in their own dragnet. They always seem to be the ones who rail against perverts but end up being the ones with naughty bits out there.

In any case, none of this will make any difference. The "legal" and "security" parts of government have always done what they have wanted and freely shared with the megacorps. Sweet dreams, everyone.

Dad who shot 'snooping vid drone' out of the sky is cleared of charges

elDog

Wonder how this fits in with the USofArms Castle and Stand-Your-Ground laws

Surely we (I'm a resident of this insane place) can blast away at anything that threatens us. After all, that drone could have been delivering a package of puerile purple pulchritude to those young ladies. (Eat your hearts out The Register headline writers.)

Ransomware victims: Just pay up, grin, and bear it – says the FBI

elDog

Re: Restoring... Maybe.

And don't forget that they may have infected the OS and even the firmware.

Mount that nice backup volume such as a USB disk and watch it also become infected/destroyed.

elDog

Paying the Dane-geld - Yup

You never get rid of the Dane.

Many of us with some Northern European genetics have been infected before and will be paying for our lives and our descendents. However, there are worse things like not having any hard discks at all.

IBM stamps its pedal to the metal: Spark flies onto Big Blue's Bluemix

elDog

Bbbbut - analytics is where it's at, right? And now it's all becoming Machine Learning

I actually think this quote is right on:

Analytics isn't a friendly world for users. The apps are pricey, there are lots of high-priced consultants, and it's a bit like ERP or CRM in that the final software never quite lives up to original expectations. The second you deploy it, it's out of date.

Fully working U-Boat Enigma machine sells for $365,000

elDog

Is that a USB 2 port?

And is it powered?

Microsoft flashes cash for security bugs in ASP.NET and .NET Core

elDog

Too bad these bounties weren't available back in ASP/NET 1.0...

There would be some rich hunters in the early days.

In other news, Microsoft is offering $US 0.00001 for every user that has cursed the backslash in pathnames.

Microsoft Azure now goes with Google's Go

elDog

Importantly, Go is a good evolution of the C idiom

It's pretty rare that anyone can re-invent a full language/support that has some critical mass from the start.

Even Java took several years to be considered a worthy language for business-class apps. Having Ms. Google as the underlying supporter is not bad in the supportive-role sense. And really not bad in the other senses since the dogfood is eaten by everyone.

I'm a big fan of the "C"-class languages vs. the sloppy-indentation style of Python/etc. I also like the strict requirements for dependency management (if you say you're going to use it, you damn well better.)

I'm sure there will be better/different ways of dealing with software development problems. Go is definitely a big step in the right direction.

CIA boss uses AOL email – and I hacked it, claims stoner teen

elDog

No problem here. As we all know these agency heads are just puppets.

There's absolutely no way that kiddos are going to be able to hack into the emails of the real movers and shakers. Don't even try to look at Hillary's email accounts. Or Petreaus's.

And, in the end, the NSA and equivalent Chinese, Isreali, Russian, Indian, and Hobbitland agencies have already recorded and analyzed the content. Nothing to see.

Let's talk about that NSA Diffie-Hellman crack

elDog

Re: V qb zl bja rapelcgvba...

Well, that put an end to all the other blather.

Cellmates, let's move on.

How to get 10Gbit/s home broadband in the US: Step 1. Move to Chattanooga, TN

elDog

But imagine the benefit of the increased speeds of watching your conflagaration at 10Gb! Of course at DSL speeds, it might be fun to watch you squirming your way to their brand of hell.

Just slightly more seriously, I've been a bit amazed at how some of those deep-red-clay-soul places have pretty good infrastructure. Not just mega-churches, but real businesses. The devil works in mysterious ways!

Microsoft now awfully pushy with Windows 10 on Win 7, 8 PCs – Reg readers hit back

elDog

Saint Bill hasn't been in charge of Evil since he started charging for free software

And slipped in those nasty back-slashed. Maybe he had something to do with that monstrosity of Basic which still lives on in various shitty gooey modes.

Kill Flash: Adobe says patch to fix under-attack hole still days away

elDog

If companies had to pay for their mal-ware, Adobe would be in debtor's prison

And will have rotted away by now. This has been going on for years. They should be prosecuted for intentionally trying to destroy western civilization, such as it is.

I'm missing the "follow the money" aspect, but do they get a few cents on every flash update they push out? WTF don't they just pull the plug?