Posts by Bob Dole (tm)

NASA picks tools for voyage to possibly LIFE-SUPPORTING moon Europa

Re: I'd like to see life....

Not sure if you're aware or not, but there are already religious wars going on in the Middle East. This really wouldn't change anything in that regard. Just another reason to add to their list of justifications for violence.

Also, the last couple of Popes have already laid the ground work for changing a few things if life outside of the Earth is actually found. So, I wouldn't expect a big hoopla to come from Catholics, or really most of the Christian sects.

Really the only big upset might be if we find intelligent life that we can communicate with AND they insist on worshipping the Crawling Lasagna Monster instead of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I mean, seriously, Lasagna? That's just insane.

Adult FriendFinder hack EXPOSES MEELLIONS of MEMBERS

Wrong title

Instead of "Adult FriendFinder data hack leaves millions of members exposed"

You *should* have titled it:

Adult FriendFinder data hack leaves millions of exposed members

Much better that way.

City of birth? Why password questions are a terrible idea

Re: Damned lies

I suspect a LOT of people do this. I know I do.

Airplane HACK PANIC! Hold on, it's surely a STORM in a TEACUP

Real threats?

Either put this guy in jail or simply ignore him. He's obviously into self promotion which the governments and various media outlets are falling all over themselves to help him with.

What I don't understand is why the FBI and media outlets are spending so much time on a story about a guy boasting he can do something that they have no proof he actually did. Further, it something that industry experts say simply isn't possible.

Are there no more real threats out there?

Steve Jobs movie gets October release date

Saw the first one. It was actually enjoyable but seriously - shouldn't they wait like 10 years before doing a remake? I know we are used to seeing the same story formulas over and over again but do we really need to see the exact same story over and over again?

Welsh police force fined £160,000 after losing sensitive video interview

I agree with others. Forget the sensitive nature of the evidence, don't they have "evidence rooms" where this crap goes?

Rare monkeys stolen from French zoo – now even rarer

Re: Isn't this

>>how 12 monkeys started?

I think they took 5 too many for that.

Maybe three of the extras are for a hear no evil display. The final two would cover one for monkey see, monkey do.

SHOCK! Robot cars do CRASH. Because other cars have human drivers

I want one

'nuff said.

NSA spying is illegal? Then let's make it law, say Republicans

Re: Mitch McConnell and Senator Burr are being a bit dense...

>> Remind me to send Mitch's office an email, pointing that out.

Don't bother. It's not like the lawmakers pay attention to the constitution unless it just happens to be inline with whatever crap they are pushing.

Sad but true

Why does these idiots keep trotting out the line that they (the NSA) will prevent an attack. The NSA has proven time and again that they won't prevent an attack at all. Why? because to do so would let the bad guys know we are spying on them.

If they were honest to god going to actually ACT before something happened then I'd be more inclined. If they were TRANSPARENT about what they are collecting, etc, I'd be more inclined.

But that's not the situation we find ourselves in. Rather we have yet another government agency that consistently lies to the public, lies to congress - basically lies to pretty much everyone about what's going on. Further they don't prevent jack or shit. To sum up: they have zero credibility.

So, no, I don't want them to have their hands in everything because I simply DON"T TRUST THEM.

With FTC suit looming, AT&T backs off on throttling 'unlimited' data plans

Statement is still meaningless

"As a result of the AT&T network management process, customers on a 3G or 4G smartphone with an unlimited data plan who have exceeded 3 gigabytes of data in a billing period may experience reduced speeds when using data services at times and in areas that are experiencing network congestion."

This statement is essentially meaningless. What does "network congestion" mean? 90% utilization? 50% utilization? 25%? Also the new wording doesn't match with what the article makes of it.

Regardless, the FCC needs to pursue this will every tool available. The word "Unlimited" has a pretty clear definition and ANY throttling on those plans needs to be turned off. If they are over selling their network then that's entirely on them and they need to upgrade it.

Why don't you rent your electronic wireless doorlock, asks man selling doorlocks

Here's a better idea:

Charge less for the product. Seriously - even basic thermostats are *incredibly* expensive with respect to production costs. A Nest thermostat runs $250 USD. If they dropped the price to something reasonable like $80 then I'd have one. At $250, no thank you. I can buy all sorts of awesome electronic gadgetry for that kind of money.

Same thing with most of the other "smart" devices on the market. Lower the price point and watch sales go up.

Online pizza order saves woman and children from knife-wielding kidnapper

Great feel good story

Ignore the "fun" comments.

I am happy that the woman was able to save herself and her children. The world needs more of these outcomes.

iPhone case uses phone's OWN SIGNAL to charge it (forever, presumably)

Re: 30% of 30% is?

You're really thinking about this too hard.

They picked a number out of the air... Something not too small so people are interested but not too big so that they can't come up with 1000 reasons why *you're* particular phone isn't getting the 30%. It's called "marketing speak".

Re: Doesn't surprise me

>> That's a big Apple FAIL if it "blats" all over the audio track you are recording.

I've experienced this issue with every iPhone I've owned - 5 of them across different generations. I've also experienced it with quite a few other non-Apple devices.

Sure, the regulations state what they are or are not allowed to do but from what I can tell regulations are meaningless until a company gets hit with a lawsuit. Then they pay a small "settlement" fee and quietly change their product. It's not like the government actually *tests* every single device that hits the market.

Why the US government reckons it should keep phone network kill-switches a secret

Cats already out of the bag

The very fact that such procedures are known to exist mean that any half way informed terrorist will plan around it. Cell network can be shut down? Well, just use shortwave radio instead.

The only real reason not to release the text is that it's likely ludicrously easy for anyone to get the ball rolling to have the networks shut down.

JP Morgan bank bod accused of flogging customer account info

Seriously, how many times did the FBI need to have absolute proof the guy needed to go to jail before they finally nabbed him?

I guess the moral of the story is: don't sell illegal info to the same person more than once.

Zucking 'ell! Facebook at Work bloke unfriends Facebook AT WORK

Given the number of businesses that block facebook, I'd say FB @ Work is likely to be binned within 24 months.

Eco-loons hack Thirty Meter Telescope website to help the 'natives'

I'd post something about how the loons should stop or whatever, but let's face it. They are loons.

Just carry on and ignore them. If you take away their voice they'll go away.

NINETY PER CENT of Java black hats migrate to footling Flash

Step two of this war should be to block flash and reader from even starting. Those two apps are so riddled that the only sane thing to do is take them to the clearing at the end of the garden path.

White House cyber-general says US must be able to cyber-nuke the worst of the cyber-worst

: /

Sometimes I really really don't like my government.

Google pulls plug on YouTube for older iPads, iPhones, smart TVs

hrm..

I have a couple samsung smart TVs that were released last year - the youtube app has always had the sound out of sync. Samsung says it's Google's fault, Google says it's samsungs fault. Personally, I don't care as neither samsung nor google will figure into my next TV purchase - except, perhaps, that those brands aren't anywhere near it.

Trading Standards pokes Amazon over 'libellous' review

At the end of the day I support Amazon's decision on this.

If they were supposed to police everything people posted on their site(s) for veracity, then I'd guess the vast majority of reviews (positive and negative) would have to be removed. Many companies have engaged in posting phony positive reviews about their products and phony negative reviews about the competition. Yes, that's a job that you can get.

Hence the reason why a number of places now have "verified owner" reviews which have a higher impact on the rating than unverified owner reviews. Not to prevent bad mouthing, rather, just to prevent *competitors* from getting in on the game.

Quite frankly, the upvote/downvote activity on this topic is very interesting. So much so that I'd hazard a guess that various people who work for the company in question are down voting anything that doesn't berate Amazon.

The Internet of things is great until it blows up your house

Re: Deeper thought

"A sensibly design IoT oven .... "

I read "sensibly" and laughed. Sensibly designed? That's even more hilarious. Come on, please tell me that you would trust the programmers at your company to "sensibly design" anything that your life might potentially depend on.

>> I can't remember the last time I needed to change the washing machine from ...

I do the laundry as well and as near as I can tell the various dials and switches are just there for a placebo effect. Except for one of them, the "eco" setting makes it take 4 times as long.

Ad-blocking is LEGAL: German court says Ja to browser filters

Re: It's my computer

" "Then install an Adblock-detector on your site and refuse to serve content to people running Adblock."

And wonder where everyone went when they switch to one of the hundreds of sites showing similar content to yours without acting like a prick."

Well, at least it won't be costing you in CPU cycles or bandwidth. If they weren't willing to watch your ads, maybe you didn't want them as a "customer" anyway.

ID yourself or get NOTHING (except Framework), snarls Metasploit

Yet another

Waste of time by the US government.

HOT HOVERSHIP-ON-HOVERSHIP ACTION: SpaceX ready for barge boing

SpaceX is seriously cool

I absolutely wish them complete and total success.

Landing a rocket on a moving platform is an incredible feat that would be the icing on their space cake.

Pre-order consumergasm will leave Apple Watches out of stock for months

>>If a watch can't even last a whole day then what flipping use is it?

In the "old" days, even a dead watch had an opportunity to be right twice a day. Sadly, this truism will fade into obscurity because our kids will have no idea what that even means.

Pregnant pause: Ancient JUMBO MARINE LIZARD pushed out sprogs in open ocean

lol

I wish scientists would stop making proclamations about stuff that they can't possibly know. We're talking about sifting through a collection of bones found a bazillion years ago.

Micro Focus guillotine will fall more frequently on Novell necks

Wow.

I didn't know Novell still existed. I don't think I've even seen an article with that name in it for a year or two.

Bone-tastic boffins' breakthrough BRINGS BACK BRONTOSAURUS

Recap on science

So, to recap how science works:

Wonk finds something cool, not quite like what already exists and names it.

Jealous wonks decide they don't like it and arbitrarily scuttle the whole thing.

New wonks finally push the jealous wonks out and fix the record.

Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile textbook manufacturers laugh all the way to the bank and at least one generation of humanity is confirmed to have been given a shoddy education.

Tell you what, how about we stop teaching our kids anything that can. Be independtly verified in a classroom setting and leave all the conjecture for Sunday mornings.

Light the torches! NSA's BFF Senator Feinstein calls for e-book burning

Re: Only time I've ever written to my MP

Yes, genesis said knowledge was dangerous, but to whom? I believe the problem was that God did not want Adam and Eve to also eat from the tree of life and therefore become "gods like us", if I remember the quote correctly.

The takeaway being: the more knowledgable the public, the more uncertain the positions of those in power. Which is probably the single most important lesson of that book.

Dot-com intimidation forces Indiana to undo hated anti-gay law

Shh..

Hush now and don't bring the bible into this. It's not like Christian's actually read that anyway.

Crack security team finishes TrueCrypt audit – and the results are in

Not Surprised.

Would be interesting to know if a group paid him to just stop. Seems the most likely reason.

Yes, AT&T, you do have to go to court with the FTC

What?

What's going on with these federal agencies? They are starting to make sense and do the right thing.

Barry Obama declares national emergency over foreign hackers

Tim foil hat? - maybe

Events over the past couple of months are starting to come into focus.

The USA is in a really bad economic situation. It owes a tremendous amount of money to foreign counties and doesn't have the will necessary to stop all the spending in order to head off a major meltdown.

The majority ownership of this debt are foreigners, mostly China. At the same time the Chinese have zero issues looting American businesses. Opportunity abounds.

Enter the Sony hack. The FBI declared to was the result of foreign actors way too fast. So fast that the only way to get that answer would be if they either didn't care who really did it, did it themselves or had operatives working within the North Korean government. All are possible. Although the speed with which they made a decision would be a red flag and put any agents in danger. So I think that is the least likely.

Now, imagine that the USA has evidence, real or not, showing China supported a hacking group which stole from a well known and liked institution. With this new act, the USA could seize all the financial assets China owns within US borders. Poof - no more debt and entirely justified from a legal perspective.

Australian online voting system may have FREAK bug

Alrighty.

To do a man in the middle secured with TLS requires quite a bit. You have to have fake certificates, the devices need to trust the fake certificate authority, etc.

Or are they saying the voting stuff site doesn't even bother with all that security bit?

Swedish city demands £40,000 to repair teenage hacking spree

Fine for the firm?

What fine does the firm have to pay for storing passwords in a non-encrypted format?

What fine does the firm have to pay for not bothering with any type of security on personal data?

If this kid has to pay 40k, then I'd think the firm out to be hit with about a 4m one. Seems fair to me.

Drug drone not high enough: Brit lags' copter snared on prison wire

*shakes head*

"Usually contraband is thrown over the wall and grabbed a little later" wtf??

If they *know* contraband is being thrown over the wall why the hell do they even allow people to get that close? Or even, why don't they at least have cameras recording who is near the walls and see who picks the stuff up? Or even, have, you know, a FRIGGIN GUARD watching the wall?

I'll ignore the idiot that manages to get a fairly expensive "drone" caught up in a small fence instead of just hovering a 100+ feet up in the air. Completely moron. But the whole "usually thrown over the wall and grabbed later" bit is completely baffling.

Moron's on the inside, moron's on the outside and moron's ignoring the whole thing. Geez. Are they even sure that everyone is still accounted for in the prison? I mean, hell, if no one is watching the fence line then surely it'd be trivial for them to leave.

Just wow.

Premera healthcare: US govt security audit gave hacked biz thumbs up

auditing == waste of time

Having been through several "audits" I can categorically state that they are a complete and total waste of time.

The things they have you do to "secure" systems usually boils down to disabling certain things like SSL 3.0 and making sure you have a virus scanner on every single piece of equipment. In no way do they perform actual pen testing or even perform intelligent analysis of what is going on with the actual data.

In other words, these audits are basically over priced people checking things off a list and usually do close to nothing to combat actual security threats that are seen.

The ONLY way this is going to get better is if people that actually know what the hell they are doing are the ones in charge of auditing. The problem is that costs more. If you really want to fix this then it needs to be a huge financial cost. So much so that insurance companies will demand it of their clients before underwriting the policies.

IS 'hackers' urge US-based jihadis: 'Wipe yourselves out trying to kill 0.00005 of US forces'

Re: Actually I think el-reg have the point entirely.

>> If El Reg really understood the point of terrorism - and in particular the fact that media coverage is what makes it 'work' - they probably wouldn't have written anything at all on the subject.

agreed. I would think Responsible news media would ignore this crap completely.

Kaspersky Lab hits back at Bloomberg's Russian spy link hit piece

McAfee or Norton anyone?

I'm curious as to what McAfee or Norton's relationship to the NSA / CIA or some other US TLA might be.

Of course, that might be a bit harder to actually uncover. Maybe some news org could just do another speculative article like this one?

Windows 10 build 10041: 99 bugs on the wall, fix a bug, add a feature, 114 bugs on the wall

Re: Is it just me ...

>>Looks f-ing awful.

100% completely agree. MS really really needs to hire some people that know how to make things look good.

Internet Explorer LIVES ON, cackle sneaky Microsoft engineers

Re: "even the name has been picked to suggest simplicity, speed and hardiness."

>>Arthritic Slower Sloth?

Windows 7 & 8 users get a free upgrade eh, so Vista users have been given the middle finger. Again!

Vista users were given the finger the day it was released. Honestly if you are still using vista then you shouldn't be on this site.

Big Data shocker: Over 6 million Americans have reached the age of 112

Re: "A database full of errors, well I never !"

>>It is important in data collection to keep everything correctly filed. The US government are merely following proper data management procedures by putting all their mistakes in a single database.

I don't think there's a database available that can hold all of that.

Mattel urged to scrap Wi-Fi mic Barbie after Register investigation

Freedom vs ...

Let's say that a child starts telling the doll about abuse. Does the company which recorded the conversation now have a legal responsibility to report it?

If so, would the government have a de facto right to then "monitor" all such recordings?

I'd call that a slippery slope but, really, it's just all straight down. There is no slope.

Kaspersky claims to have found NSA's 'space station malware'

Re: This discovery is unfortunate

>>Now the bad guys will be removing useful programs to deter crime. We certainly do not want to help the bad guys. With Russia's brutal and unacceptable imperialistic actions of recent days, we may soon learn about some of their spyware.

ProTip: They are ALL bad guys.

Google MURDERS Google Code, orders everyone out to GitHub and co

Re: Yup

>>Google comes up with some nice ideas, implements them partially, turns them into lights-out operations with casual users as tech support, and pulls the plug once there is a critical mass of people dependent on them. Sometimes it feels like Charlie Brown and the football...

Why does that remind me of Microsoft.. Oh wait, because they come up with a nice idea, do a half ass implementation, then usually kill it BEFORE it's actually really useful but AFTER a number of devs are working with it.

This, more than anything else, is why I simply don't rely on Google or Microsoft for anything other than "core" services such as email, office productivity and certain servers that have been around for many years.

The voters hate Google. Heeeeyyyy... how about a 'Google Tax'?

Re: Hmmm

Countries that have tried this sort of thing generally find themselves cut off from the rest of the world.