Posts by bombastic bob

Microsoft sued by staff traumatized by child sex abuse vids stashed on OneDrive accounts

Re: What <i>the hell</i> are Microsoft doing going through our files?

"You take a few photos of your kids playing in the bath."

When you consider the *AGGRESSIVE* *NANNY* *STATE* aspect, this is highly realistic.

there are just TOO MANY out there, "Ninny Nannies", who are TOO WILLING to mind EVERYBODY ELSE'S BUSINESS, instead of LEAVING PEOPLE THE *FEEL* ALONE and letting US mind OUR own business, thank you very much.

Privacy is important. There are _OTHER_ (better) ways of catching criminals that do _NOT_ involve privacy invasion, *ESPECIALLY* by a 3rd party like MICRO-SHAFT.

I have considered doing something *LIKE* taking photos of 'troll dolls' in ways that might "trigger" their inspection of them, and then DELIBERATELY uploading them to a OneDrive directory, just to tweek them. but I'd have to spend time doing that, and I have better things to do...

Re: Microsoft should probably pay out and move on

"The people who store these images should be bought to some kind of justice; not warned to encrypt the files..."

They probably won't encrypt anything. Usually crooks aren't very smart, which is why you find 'dumb crook' web sites and news bytes all over the place.

However, it's _ALSO_ not MICRO-SHAFT's job to be "world police".

/me hums "Micro-shaft... *FEEL* YEAH! Making the world a better place! Micro-shaft, *FEEL* YEAH!" ['Feel' is the new 'F' word]

Re: @palpy: Yup. Quite bullshitty.

"I run an Owncloud server for me and some friends. The server copies of the files are encrypted and I cannot see what is in there. that seems to be the default for everyone else other than microsoft. Why are they doing this?"

you make an extremely good point. And, by the way, thanks for doing things the _right_ way and protecting the users' privacy. [I have heard of other services that do this as well, such as on-line backup services]

They (Micro-shaft) are doing what they do because THEY CAN. And so they cannot be trusted. It's part of the POLITICS of MICRO-SHAFT. MSNBC is owned by them, after all. They tried to shove Win-10-nic up our backsides for a year, and AGGRESSIVELY so, complete with deceptive 'click the red x' behavior of GWX. None of this should come as a surprise. Once you understand how they think, it's simply appalling, and you wanna just face-palm all of the time in response.

At least, now, it's out in the open where anyone can read about it.

[It would not surprise me at ALL if the capability of rifling through everyone's on-line content was a part of their original plan/design for OneDrive. No surprise at ALL]

Re: @palpy

"That's the worst kind of bullshit appeal to emotion with no actual debate value."

good summary. I wasn't going to respond to it [trolling, straw-man, etc.]

Besides - people who would do such things, would know me and fear me. Heh.

If I had to do that job, I'd most likely become calloused to it, sorta like internet shock sites that just aren't shocking any more. It's not something I'd necessarily enjoy.

But the MORE DISTURBING part is the fact that they WERE going through things and looking at them! So, 'get a warrant' indeed. Let the COPS do that part, with judicial permission. It's THEIR job.

And I have no sympathy for people who wear their emotions on their sleeves, "feel" everything, and so on. That should be obvious. Natural selection would've "selected them out" back in the cave-days. Unfortunately, in the modern era, NEGATIVE genetics like *that* are being re-enforced by enriching them via wimpy-ass LAWSUITS. Idiocracy anyone? 'Nuff.

And sometimes you just have to admit that Patton was right. "Man up". PTSD is real, but a swift kick in the ass should be a major part of the therapy.

poor widdle snowflakes... wait, what?

On one hand, "oh my hear it bleeds for you" to the tune of 'hearts and flowers' on the world's smallest violin, for those poor widdle snowflakes who had to view illegal pr0n in order to discover that it was, well, illegal pr0n.

On the other hand, as the previous poster so wittily pointed out, MICRO-SHAFT! IS! APPARENTLY! RIFLING! THROUGH! OUR! CLOUD! FILES! looking for things...

what's NEXT on their list o' things to report, MEDIA PIRACY? Like someone who gets a takedown notice because of an unrelated youtube video in which a song is playing in the background on a TV or radio, barely audible, but just happens to be 'there' while the video is being recorded. Yes, I've seen this.

MICRO-SHAFT: It's called *PRIVACY*, and you need to STOP INVADING IT!

Anti-smut law dubs PCs, phones 'pornographic vendor machines', demands internet filters

"Though by US conservative standards"

(etc.)

no, this kind of thing wouldn't be 'conservative' at all. "Right-wing activist" yes. "Moral crusader" yes. 'Conservative' means, in one sense, NOT being 'radical' like that. FYI.

please don't confuse right-wing activism with conservatism. k-thx.

Re: How would such a filter even work?

"Or do the legislators want to vet all the smut sites personally."

most likely, even those with the greatest moral outrage. [closet pervs with public outrage]

No doubt the standard would be based on "feelings" of a handful of moral crusaders.

There is NOTHING WORSE from a gummint than having laws based ENTIRELY on someone's "feelings" via "subjective" standards, like a tin-horn dictator running everything, outlawing things like chewing gum merely because he doesn't like it, etc.. Such subjective standards are the best way to cause a 'chilling tension', people always looking over one shoulder to see if the 'secret police' are watching. And the need for 'secret police'. And 'brown-shirt' neighbors. Yeah.

Re: Now THAT is worth hacking

"All you do is get a sufficiently large number of people to claim that the local government websites are actually pornographic (in an extremely deviant manner)"

not much of a 'stretch' considering how gummint is *ALWAYS* trying to SCREW the citizenry, and in the case of politicians like Mr. Clinton, it's a bit more literal.

I have a name for the intarweb filter: "bendover.sys" <-- requires Win-10-nic

Re: Linux and DD-WRT

"Who is the manufacturer who is required to provide the filter?"

I bet they'll just outlaw anything other than "Windows for Wussies" (encumbered Win-10-nic) and expect everyone to just comply.

And, maybe they'll require ISPs to "filter" any downloads of ISO or IMG files for non-Windows operating systems as "potential pr0n" or something

I suppose you could have a few people illegally distributing non-compliant ISO and IMG files. Add more fun, pre-load them with *PR0N* in the form of wallpapers and screen savers. And a whole lot of anime screenshots, too (particularly furo scenes). Yum!

Their 'final solution':

"Wait... what's that 451 message doing on freebsd.org? I can't access the site any more!"

a sad day indeed, when you must manually configure Tor to go to the darknet to get an update for Firefox (or a non-windows OS) that does NOT include the pr0n filter...

Re: Good luck with that one.

"I can already see the residents driving over state lines to purchase their devices elsewhere that doesn't have such a boneheaded bullshit policy."

hopefully, THAT reality will just kill it to death, deader than hell [as it ought to be]

New Windows 10 privacy controls: Just a little snooping – or the max

not got much spam in it

"Spam eggs sausage and Spam - that's not got much Spam in it!"

"I don't want ANY Spam!"

and I don't want ANY spying.

It's now 2017, and your Windows PC can still be pwned by a Word file

Re: Meanwhile, Adobe is updating blah de fucking blah

I stopped doing *anything* flash when gnash wouldn't play with the latest unnecessary change to the file format. I don't need Adobe's spyware running on a BSD or Linux box, after all! Fortunately, HTML5 has taken care of that. Now, why IS anyone using flash these days?

FBI let alleged pedo walk free rather than explain how they snared him

Re: Scumbag Olympics...

"Isn't it better to prevent a crime than to punish someone who committed it?"

every cop would LOVE to catch criminals in the act. unfortunately, MOST of the time, all they can do is investigate (i.e. draw a chalk-line) and arrest, and THEN hand the evidence to prosecution to convict and incarcerate. Yeah not a lot of 'caught in the act' going on, here.

this is where the concept of "citizen's arrest", as well as reporting crimes [identifying yourself so you can be called as a witness] can be extremely helpful. And 'concealed carry' laws. Because there aren't enough cops to stop every crime, but there are a lot of honest citizens that can really really make a difference.

Re: Fighting Child Porn Like Fighting Drugs

"We need a better approach which treats the root cause of this and fixes them before they fuck up someones life, not after."

only a 'feel' solution is likely to come out of this line of thinking, which means more gummint, stupidER laws, and a whole lot of emotion and getting NOTHING accomplished. no thanks.

How about this: you punish criminals as HARD as you can, keep them out of peaceful society for as LONG as you can, and actually _ENFORCE_ death penalties without decades of "appeals" dragging it on indefinitely?

There is actual _EVIL_ in the world. There are people who will go out of their way to do criminal act to get money or pleasure [or whatever], even if their skills and intelligence could otherwise get them employed, eventually making MORE money than they'd get doing illegal crap, or else they have enough money to do LEGAL things rather than ILLEGAL ones.

I've known a couple of these *kinds* of people: an uncle, and a friend's brother. Both are dead, and you COULD say their own evil/selfish lifestyle contributed to a short lifespan, as well as outright victimizing others (or society in general) from time to time.

It's not society's fault, their parents' fault, or anybody ELSE's fault but their own. They, by their VERY NATURE, seek to do evil things without giving a crap about how much it hurts others (or society in general). Sometimes people call them 'sociopaths', or even 'psychopaths', but I have a better term: CRIMINALS. And you PUNISH criminals, get them away from the peaceful and orderly people, by INCARCERATING them for as LONG as you can legally do so.

Fixing the root cause of THAT can only be done by eliminating the aberrations (criminally-minded people) from the bell curve of human nature. Or, you can just lock them up and keep them away from potential victims, which generally works every time it's tried...

Re: depends on which side of the Atlantic

"Also, in certain jurisdictions, for reason I can't comprehend, even cartoons can be classified as 'Child pornography' by the law..."

which is assinine, because NOW it's just "moral police" and not protecting actual children from exploitation...

which, of course, is why child porn is illegal, because actual CHILDREN were victimized in its production. [sane laws would focus on THAT aspect alone, and leave the rest out of it]

Re: depends on which side of the Atlantic

regarding 'entrapment' etc.

I once received spam mail with an attached photo of a kid and the lower half of a naked male with what appeared to be "something pornographic" on the kid's face, obviously meant to represent something specific, and the kid was fully clothed. Someone online suggested it was probably photoshopped and that they used Pina colada for the 'visual effect', to skirt the child pornography laws. Still, something like that isn't welcome in your e-mail inbox...

I still submitted it (with headers) to an FBI online 'reporting' web site (probably ifccfbi.gov or similar)

there have also been frequent-enough cases where an image site gets a brief upload of such material, maybe 5 or 10 minutes before it's taken down. that's when you go to your intarweb cache and purge, purge, purge. can't do much about the need for 'brain bleach' though.

on a lighter note...

"the admission that the FBI had been distributing such images and videos online troubled many"

Sorta like "Fast and Furious" without the guns

TV anchor says live on-air 'Alexa, order me a dollhouse' – guess what happens next

Re: You are wrong on "cannot distinguish users"... You never had a parrot then?

"The since deceased parrot"

and now I'm thinking of the parrot being nailed to his perch... pining for the Fjords?

I suppose Alexa could be trained to order crackers...

Fedora 25: You've got that Wayland feelin', oh, that Wayland feelin'

"First touched Linux in 1995"

you got me beat by about 8 years. I installed Debian Woody the first time I used Linux... and FreeBSD 4.7 slightly before that. It was a true "awakening".

gnome 1.x with sawfish... bzzzzZZZZZ! [it used to make that sound on startup]

Re: Another major change no one is asking for

"But people have been crying out for the end of X11 for a long time."

which people? I haven't... [I want to MEET those 'straw men' and not just hear about them]

(all _I_ want is a really simple C language cross-platform toolkit that lets me have "virtual space" in a multi-line edit window... wait, I'm working on one!!! X11workbench, which is still pre-alpha after all these years)

But you see, THEY get what THEY want, but _I_ do not get what _I_ want. that's hardly FAIR.

I have to wonder if it's the *SAME* kind of thinking behind Wayland, systemd, and gnome 3, that gave us Windows "Ape" (8.x) and Win-10-nic...

(yes we do NOT need "that' in the open source world, *especially* if it's part of 'Embrace, Extend, EXTINGUISH' or similar)

Re: Try MATE if you can't stand GNOME 3

ACK on both "use MATE" and "gnome 3 has multiple desktops"

The biggest gripe from me regarding gnome 3 is the "fat finger friendliness". with gnome 2, then Mate, I can put 22 launch icons, plus the menu, system monitor, and the clock stuff into the top panel, and STILL have room for white space between groups of things. I can't even do HALF of that with Gnome 3 and they only let you group left, center, right. I want MULTIPLE groups, and positioned manually, MY way, not THEIR way. Like that. You can't cram them next to one another where a mouse does JUST fine selecting and clicking, because, fat-finger-friendly and "dumb it down for those who aren't on board with the new, shiny".

I wrote a web page, once, "making gnome 3 usable", which insulted gnome 3 while explaining how to deal with its quirks and set it up to be usable again [mostly]. And I (somewhat carefully) posted a link to it on a gnome 3 developer mailing list. I got several 'near flames' from various gnome 3 devs, but they wouldn't take the hint. THEN, Mate appeared, and the problems were solved!

"Being a KDE and Nvidia user"

Mate and NVidia here. My older X11 desktop (from >2 years ago) works pretty well using Xorg, and FreeBSD had Gnome 2 back then (so I'm still running it). Mate's just the next revision...

change for the sake of change is highly overrated. why must the open source world follow Micro-shaft's ARROGANCE and FOLLY?

I'm not saying I *hate* Wayland, but there are things about X11 that I don't want to LOSE, things I use all of the time - like running an X11 application on an X server that's hosted on a different (remote) machine, via an ssh tunnel [for starters]. Can Wayland do THAT ?

If I start a Linux machine without a GUI [still possible to do this], and log into an ssh console, I should be able to 'export DISPLAY=mymachine:0.0' and run ANY X11 application, displaying the GUI on 'mymachine'. If that's "not secure enough", maybe it should be an option...

I'd also need to be able to run something like 'tightvnc server' to be able to debug GUI applications from within a GUI. Not sure if Wayland has the same kind of lock-up problems you get when you set debug breakpoints and don't respond to certain X11 events while paused... (that's an irritation in X11, yes).

from https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html

"does it support remote rendering?"

"No, that is outside the scope of Wayland. To support remote rendering you need to define a rendering API, which is something I've been very careful to avoid doing."

And, THAT pretty much says it all, I think!

I hope that the open source world does NOT try and push Wayland the way they've pushed GNOME 3 and other "fat-finger-friendliness"

Microsoft goes retro with Vista, Zune-style Windows Neon makeover

Re: As long as we are griping...

beer and hot dogs - Play Ball!

Re: At least they're trying!

"I'm trying" - the excuse most often used by those who are too lazy to actually work at something and/or get it right.

Makes you wanna say "No excuse, recruit. Drop down and give me 20!"

Re: Still not as good as it used to be...

"I'm having to use Windows 7 again for the first time since 2012. It feels so 'icky'. I much prefer the cleaner look of Windows 10."

should I treat this the way the ARROGANT MILLENIAL MICRO-SHAFT SHILLS treat those who do NOT like Win-10-nic?

You know, things like:

a) Refusing to 'CHANGE BACK' to something that's obviously better

b) Get on board, deal with it, it's the way things ARE, suck it up, etc.

c) don't want to "learn new things" (or in this case, re-learn old things)

d) Resisting "change" (or in this case, change BACK)

e) everybody ELSE likes it so you should, to

etc.

naw. I'll leave it alone. heh.

"I'll say it before Bob gets here with his pointless upper case: still fugly."

too late. heh.

Micro-shaft can't even find a 'decent interface look' with both hands and a map [especially since windows '95 through 7 are sitting there STARING BACK AT THEM, wondering W.T.F. Micro-shaft is doing...]

Re: Still not as good as it used to be...

Right, it's *STILL* 2D FLATSO FLUGLY, no matter HOW much lipstick you put on the boar...

and no doubt, still spying on you, forcing you to take "updates" or they'll shove them up your down your throat.

Splunk: Why we dumped Perforce for Atlassian's Bitbucket of Gits

Re: Saucy!

my experiences with "all of the above" suggests that p4 doesn't really give you any advantages in any way, and of course with svn vs git they seem similar. except, of course, git seems to "cloud" well and so public projects on github [and even occasional private ones] make a lot of sense.

one thing I really liked about p4, back in the day, was its support of FreeBSD [though it was binary-only and sometimes required that I install binary compatibility for earlier kernels]

Google nukes ad-blocker AdNauseam, sweeps remains out of Chrome Web Store

Re: What would you expect

I guess it may be time to 'fork' Chrome and maintain a 'totally free' version...

(you gotta admire the fact that it's open source over on chromium.org)

China to Donald Trump: Twitter diplomacy 'undesirable'

If China wasn't filtering tw*tter

If China wasn't filtering tw*tter... they would object a bit less.

But their diplomats CANNOT SEE THE TWEETS! (because of the Great Firewall)

Put walls around home Things, win $25k from US government

Re: Leave them...

I was hoping to invent some 'wireless cutters'

Muntzing to the max!

Re: Didn't Norton just secure world+dog from IDIoT devices?

"Strangely, there's no sarcasm alert icon"

how about this one?

(or maybe just 'all of them', depending)

Lenovo shows off 'Microsoft-friendly' VR cosplay at CES

"Nobody wants Windows 8, 8.1, or 10..."

ack - they should support OSX, Linux, Android, iOS, ...

(there are more Android devices, by far, than Win-10-nic devices)

Those online ads driving you bonkers are virtually 'worthless for brands'

Re: Puzzled

"Subliminal ads do not work as desired. They just annoy the crap out of anybody with half a brain."

I'm at the point I don't even *SEE* the banner ads, whether or not 'NoScript' is causing them to not appear in the first place. And if your macula isn't trained on the ad, you don't see the content, either. It's just "a blur".

Busted Oracle finance cloud leaves Rutgers Uni unable to foot bills

Re: Deserve Each Other?

"while the other is a third rate state university."

yes, but the co-ed in the photo has a nice pair of jugs. If I go there, can I find a girl with a nice pair of jugs?

poor widdle snowflakes

poor widdle snowflakes, don't know what to do on their own. Things like this USED to be handled by accountants and accounting staff. But now it's Oracle cloudy something. Maybe it's time to hire a temp for the interrim? Someone who learned how to add and subtract would be a plus.

and 1 more reason why "the cloud" is HIGHLY overrated... and 'higher' education as well.

Internet of Sh*t has an early 2017 winner – a 'smart' Wi-Fi hairbrush

now I know why I can't think of a single useful IoT gadget...

and NOW I know why I can't think of a single useful IoT gadget (to invent, that is). I mean, look at what's already OUT there!

Re: Incredible (Talking Toilet Paper!!)

it'd probably criticize my diet, and report details to the NSA

The Zucker Mister Social Club: Facebook's daddy wants to be your friend, for realsies

the LAST thing we need...

Great. The LAST thing we need is *YET* *ANOTHER* techno-wealthy guilt-motivated "silly valley" LEFTIST invading the political sphere. Only THIS time, it would be more OVERT than COVERT.

The 'guilty rich'. Always ready to "make that sacrifice". And *MAKE* *THE* *REST* *OF* *US* *SACRIFICE* *EVEN* *MORE* !!! [to selfishly assuage their personal guilt]

And he'd just be ANOTHER puppet for SOROS anyway...

New Android-infecting malware brew hijacks devices. Why, you ask? Your router

Re: Infection Vector

it sounds to me that if you were to disable wifi configuration of the router (i.e. requiring an ethernet connection, rather than a wifi connection, to admin the thing) it would disable the vector...

just a thought. probably a good idea to configure that [no wifi-connected admin'ing], when possible.

‘Artificial Intelligence’ was 2016's fake news

Re: AI is as AI does

"after seeing the insides I started taking a large flask of coffee every day in preference to the risk of flavourless botulism."

"New, Shiny!" Now, with LESS BOTULISM!

Re: AI is as AI does

or you could have a bot dispense hot water, and add your own tea bag. Bigelow is pretty good here in the US. they get a measurable chunk of MY money...

(let the bots do what they're good at, and people can do the rest)

Re: Please rearrange these words

your sentence structure, more sense it makes, mmMMmmm

Re: Great to see.

also 'photographic reading' takes too much practice and has limited benefit. better to just allow your mind to run at high speed, don't audio-lize the words but let it flow phonetically into your mind faster than you could possibly vocalize. that's what I do. unless I'm trying to absorb the context better. and yeah, I miss the spelling errors, dyslexic letters, and things like that.

/me thinks: Do you suffer from 'dylsexia'?

[in the 1960's, some mensa candidate decided to teach children to read using look/say rather than phonics. the result was a bunch of kids who couldn't read]

Folders return to Windows 10's Start Thing

Re: "Classic Shell"

"But apparently marketing people rule the roost at MS and are notoriously hard to educate."

Ack.. Let me into the Halls of Redmond carrying a Clue-By-4, a Clue-bat, a Cat-5-o-9-tails, and a few other odds and ends, and maybe I can "educate" them a bit...

or not. they may be beyond hope.

Re: "It’s a mystery why Microsoft..."

I think there are several explanations, all converging:

a) Ballmer's "take over the world" approach, wanted something unique and patentable that could be used to squeeze out competition forever

b) Sinofsky's "new, shiny" approach to the GUI created the tile screen, because he failed to see EXISTING INSTALL BASE as "important". _EVERYBODY_ was on a slab or phone now, right?

c) The marketing guy who was canned early last year [forget his name] was a big part of this. His market research was *WAY* too narrow in scope, basically interviewing shills and fanbois to get feedback, and ignoring "the rest of us". Keep in mind THAT guy was around for several F-ups, including Vista, "The Ribbon", Silverlight, Win "APE", _AND_ Win-10-nic.

d) Senior development staff "now retired" - and ONLY! ARROGANT! MILLENIAL! CHILDREN! seem to be running the asylum... (it's THEIR TURN to do it THEIR WAY, now, and those old guys just DID NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING, so NOW it will be done *PROPERLY* by YOUNG people!!! W00T LOL text-text-text 4" rules)

e) FIRING of the testing groups, so that end-users become "the new testers" for Enterprise. Not even PRO users escape, THIS time!!!

yeah, all of that ARROGANCE and WRONG THINKING had to come from SOMEWHERE, and it happened right there in Redmond, with a capital T and that rhymes with 'C' and that stands for CRAP (which is what Micro-shaft has been EXCRETING these past few years)

"Maybe it's because I like cutting edge hardware and have a lot of it, but no Linux distribution is as out-of-the-box ready to run as Windows 10"

thanks for the 'shilling'

Re: Stardock Start10

even if I use that, or classic shell [which is FREE last I checked], it DOES! NOT! FIX! THE! 2D! FLATSO! FLUGLY! [nor does it fix the 'settings' vs 'control panel' horsecrap]

and the adware+spyware and FORCED UPDATES are _STILL_ there

Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?

you know, 7 works just fine on a 10 year old laptop. thing is, the software that RUNS on 7 is just as piggy as evar... (like devstudio, for one)

I had FreeBSD running on that same machine, at one time. It ran fine as well. The gnome 2 desktop does well enough on the older hardware, *WITH* nice 3D skeuomorphic appearance (the way 7 is). That laptop came with XP on it [also worked well].

So _WHY_ do we need Win-10-nic ???

Prez Obama expels 35 Russian spies over election meddling

if Russia WAS behind the e-mail hacks...

if Russia WAS behind the e-mail hacks...

THEY! DESERVE! A! BEER!

Thanks, guys! Cheers! Das Vadania! (or however you spell it)

Re: Evidence it was the Russians what dunnit

"There is something wrong with the system when a Lame Duck President can be issuing Executive Orders from his holiday complex in Hawaii three weeks before he is made redundant."

more like irrelevant.

Obaka's just doing whatever damage he can on the way out the door. Of course HE doesn't see it that way, but that's the overall effect. Hell, might as well screw Israel as much as possible to placate the Islamists while we're at it, blame Russia, make a stupid lame attempt at "retaliation" like we're on a kindergarten playground or something.

What a Maroon! Well, some people at least expected this kind of thing. So you have a pile of executive orders being issued, while he can, without a care as to the consequences, since the election is OVER and HIS SIDE LOST. So he'll get his "digs" in anyway.

Let's see how long it takes for Congress and Trump to undo it all...