* Posts by Maelstorm

367 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2015

Page:

Qualcomm demands blueprints to Intel chips used in Apple iPhones

Maelstorm Bronze badge

I find it strange that Intel is holding out until at least September before handing documents over to Qualcomm. That implies that there might be something to Qualcomm's argument that the chips are infringing to some extent.

Now why is QC suing Apple for patent infringement again? Apple didn't make the allegedly infringing chips, Intel did. So why isn't QC suing Intel instead for patent infringement? In my mind, going after Apple who just uses the chips is libel to backfire right on QC's face because then you have to prove that Apple knew that those chips were infringing. Proxy suit?

I don't particularly like Apple or their viewpoint, but I'm with them on this one. QC should be going after Intel.

The internet's very own Muslim ban continues: DNS overlord insists it can freeze dot-words

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Re: Too late

Well, the Bible is a real book (As is the Koran and the Torah), and churches are a real place (as is mosques and synagogues). However, Christianity is a religion, and so is Islam and Catholic. I can see that .catholic is a strange one because that religion is centered around what the Vatican (which is a separate country in and of itself) says and does. This is similar to .judaism because Israel is the only Jewish theocracy in the world that I'm aware of.

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Boffin

A few issues

All that I see here are issues with no solutions. Well, maybe one...

1. Fracturing the DNS root system is not a good idea because that is how someone from the US like me, can read and comment on these forums. It will be like the .onion TLD which was never approved but is in use on the dark web and requires a special browser to access.

2. This issue started when ICANN was under the purview of the US-DOC. But now that they are on their own, they have gone completely out of control. If they will not follow their own bylaws, then it makes me wonder if they will follow a court order issued by a judge in a court of law. I know they probably won't if the court is in a foreign jurisdiction, but even in the US...

3. Currently, ICANN's regulations that the registrars must follow are in direct conflict with the laws of some countries. Case in point is Germany, which puts the registrars between a rock and a hard place. Either follow your country's laws and risk your status as a registrar or follow ICANN's regulations and risk getting sanctioned by your country's legal system.

4. The fact that this as been going on for six years already makes me ask the question Why? According to the article, they are disobeying their own bylaws, which a judge in the US should be able to make them follow with a court order. This just demonstrates the abuse of power they are committing since they are no longer under the purview of the US Government.

In the past, I was against making internet governance part of the UN-ITU. However, seeing how ICANN has been abusing their authority lately, that may not be such a bad idea considering that every man, woman, and child is a stakeholder in the global internet which crosses international borders.

How hack on 10,000 WordPress sites was used to launch an epic malvertising campaign

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Devil

Waiting for a response...

"El Reg invited AdsTerra, AdKernel, AdventureFeeds and EvoLeads to comment. We'll update this story as and when we get a response."

And there's some more to add to the DNS block list. I need a full list so I can block all of them. Ad block software not needed, and it's not detectable since it's running on my own server.

Politicians fume after Amazon's face-recog AI fingers dozens of them as suspected crooks

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

Accuracy?

Hmm... It sounds like the software is not working correctly with a 95% error rate. All 535 members of Congress are crooks...they just haven't been caught yet. Which means that the ACLU has it backwards.

Some Things just aren't meant to be (on Internet of Things networks). But we can work around that

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Facepalm

Re: No...

"Wi-fi uses photons, not electrons."

Neither, actually. It uses radio waves just like most other wireless communications systems not dependent on line of sight (which rules out infrared which is still an electromagnetic wave).

Wrong. It is photons. A radio wave is a photon. Go look at your electromagnetic spectrum chart. Visible light is on it.

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

"For the Wifi I changed the SSID and set it to not broadcast"

"This provides you very nearly no additional protection."

What if I put a condom over it? I hear that Trojans are the best protection that you can get, and it feels like nothing at all.

All that dust on Mars is coming from one weird giant alien structure

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Alien

So it wasn't...

So it wasn't the face on Mars that's responsible for all that dust then?

Man, I thought it really was the aliens.

Google Chrome: HTTPS or bust. Insecure HTTP D-Day is tomorrow, folks

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Mushroom

What right does Google really have to dictate to independent websites on what protocols they can use? Especially on an intranet where both endpoints belong to the same entity? This is Google becoming the North Korea of the internet.

As for getting a cert, just self-sign your own. That's what I did. I became my own CA and rolled the cert out to all machines on the LAN. It's a pain in the arse, but what can you do when you have a company who thinks they can dictate internal company policy.

Time to dump Chrome and go for a different browser...I hear that Opera is pretty good.

Crypto gripes, election security, and mandatory cybersec school: Uncle Sam's cyber task force emits todo list for govt

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

In other words...

...God forbid that the average citizen has the ability to lock down their data so that spooks, spies, and government agents on fishing expeditions (or otherwise) cannot access it. After all, a citizen who can enforce their privacy rights is an enemy of the state, right?

Or to paraphrase a quote from Putin in The Hunt for the Red October "Privacy is detrimental to the well-being of society..." or something like that.

Y'know... Publishing tech specs may be fair use, says appeals court

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

Um...Yeah

The Georgia one is a real winner. You cannot get the official state code without paying US $23,000 or some outrageous amount for it because it's copyrighted. I can see it now:

Defendant: Your Honor, I had no idea that there was a law saying that I could not do that.

Judge: Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

Defendant: But your Honor, how am I to know what the law is if I cannot get access to the text of the law? It's not available publicly, and I can't afford the fee to get access to the law.

Judge: Not my problem. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

The big issue with this and cases like this one is that it fosters secret laws and the double standard. The law must be available freely to the public. Otherwise, you can end up in jail for violating a law that is on the books, but nobody but a select few is allowed access to the books.

Irish fella accused of being Silk Road admin 'Libertas' hauled to US

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Mushroom

Extraditing random people?

I'm not familiar with the Silk Road case, other than the fact that it was on the dark web. Where was the server located? If it was not located in the US, then what authority is the US claiming to have for his extradition?

It is beginning to sound like if a citizen in another country violates US laws, then the US wants to throw them in jail, even if it's legal where that person is.

Apple fanbois ride to the aid of iGiant in patent spat with Qualcomm

Maelstorm Bronze badge

That was actually my question as well. As someone already mentioned, Qualcomm can go after end-users for licensing fees if they so wish, but that will be very bad PR for them. Assuming that Intel manufactured the LTE modems, shouldn't both be sued? A number of years ago, Qualcomm violated Broadcom's patents and the latter won an ITC ruling that banned the import of devices using the offending chips.

Besides, Apple and their little spat with Samsung, Apple needs to be brought down a couple of pegs.

Software engineer fired, shut out of office for three weeks by machine

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

The Bastard System Operator From Hell

Oh that story brings back memories. It's quite a read. Do yourself a favor and enjoy it here:

http://bofh.bjash.com/

IBM loses mainframe docs down the back of the web, customers cry 'sabotage'

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

And once again...

...we are met face to face with the main issue of software development here in the USA. Companies are so keen to get their product out the door as quickly as possible, testing is either minimal or non-existent. This is why commercial software (even open source in many cases) here in the USA is always in Beta. We write the software. You buy it to have the privilege of testing it for us. If you find a problem, we'll fix it in the next version which you have to also buy.

And it's not just software...it's everything tech. Even websites, as this case has shown.

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

Hey el Reg, you messed up some facts in your article...

This here is wrong: "We made no mention of the fact that there is every reason to believe that Atari's entire enterprise is being funded by hype and that the only way the company can afford to create even its first console is by persuading people to hand over their cash before the company itself has a working prototype."

This is by far not first console with the Atari name. Atari used to make consoles back in the 1980s. The one that most people remember was the Atari 2600. There were other consoles, and even some computers during that time. But then they got kicked out of the market and went to being a software only company. And before someone says something, there was a number of mergers and acquisitions as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari

As for Atari, if they go through the trouble to get an el Reg reporter in there, then perhaps they should have shown more than some plastic. Instead, they just wasted everyone's time. el Reg called them out on it, and rightly so. If they want to get a product to market quickly, maybe they should get in bed with V-Tech. At least then it can be marketed to the Fisher-Price age group which seems to be about the same age/intelligence rating of the current executive staff.

"Atari is so full of crap that it should be labeled as a hazardous waste zone." LOL LOL LOL British humor at it's finest.

What's all the C Plus Fuss? Bjarne Stroustrup warns of dangerous future plans for his C++

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Uhggg Another C++ standard?

You know, we don't really need any new features to the language. In fact, there's a few features that probably should be removed. So yes, I agree with Bjarne Stroustrup. Right tool for the job really. I view C++ as the object oriented version of C, and I use C...a lot in my coding since I code close to the bare metal. C and assembler for my work.

C: Low level system stuff such as kernels, device drivers, libraries, etc...

C++: Higher level application stuff (especially on GUI platforms) or when using objects make sense...like the Abstract Syntax Tree that's generated from a parser and is fed into the code generator for a compiler. OOP makes sense here since the nodes are all the same, the data they contain is what differentiates what type of node it is.

Here's a little thing that Linus said about C++. Enjoy.

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

US-CERT warns of more North Korean malware

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

Re: Didn't get the memo?

Didn't the war with Oh Canada already happen some years ago in the movie Wag the Dog?

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Devil

Not surprising. For those of you who don't remember, NK was fingered for the massive hack against Sony/BMG a number of years ago. The motive was a movie they made called 'The Interview.'

Now if you have seen the movie, imagine if the roles of Kim Jong and Trump reversed.

Unbreakable smart lock devastated to discover screwdrivers exist

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

They finally did it...

They finally did it... They finally made a lock that every intelligence agency on the planet can fall in love with. I'll bet they won't use it themselves.

ICANN pays to push Whois case to European Court of Justice

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Black Helicopters

The problem here...

The problem here is that ICANN is not bound by EU regulations. They are only bound by US regulations because they have a contract with the US Department of Commerce (USDOC). So the way that I see it, ICANN can pretty much do what they want as long as two things are followed:

1. They follow US laws.

2. They uphold the terms of the contract with the USDOC which is not available publicly.

Since ICANN has sole control over a number of TLDs, and they also run the 13 root name servers, they can easily sanction any registrar who does not follow their rules if ICANN wants to play hardball. The best way to handle the situation would be to go through a treaty/international agreement to file a complaint with the USDOC.

In other words, the reality of the situation is that we have a corporation who exists entirely in one country, following the laws of that one country, who has the power and ability to dictate to the entire planet how things are done, regardless of what local laws/regulations say because of their unique position. The local governments do not really have any power to enforce their own laws in their own country because said corporation has no assets to leverage in that country. So the corporation can punish/sanction their members without fear of repercussions from those local governments.

So ICANN can tell the EU to pound sand, sanction EU registrars, and thumb their nose at any fines the EU may impose since a EU court decision is not binding inside the borders of the US. There is case law here in the US to support this viewpoint (mainly with France). I think the UN's ITU should take this over, but because of the aforementioned reasons, the US has to agree, and so far they haven't. The EU could form their own DNS system, but then we run into the situation where you now have two conflicting systems (TOR is an example).

I live in the US myself, and I don't like it, but this is the reality of the situation that the world is in. Because of our power and status in the international community, the US has a habit of ignoring UN directives.

Which? calls for compensation for users hit by Windows 10 woes

Maelstorm Bronze badge

My Windows 10 experience has been mostly positive. The major problems that I have had deal with updates. I have yet to install 1803. Considering the number of problems with it, I don't think I will. I usually download the updates from Microsoft and manually install them. Some of those updates can be quite large though...upwards of 1GB or more in some cases. As a result however, I do not run into the problems that others have had.

On the other hand, you have to be pretty sharp to be able to maintain it though. It's worse than maintaining a Unix box. I had to reinstall Windows on a friends netbook because she ran out of space on a 32GB drive and Windows destroyed itself. Yeah, that was Windows 10.

Facebook and Snap jam Blackberry patent suit

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Re: Blackberry has a good case and chance to win...

Not entirely true. The USPTO, with the backing of Congress, has created a process called the IPR (Inter Partes Review), which was recently upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision. This came about because of a problem with patent trolls, which is what Blackberry has been mostly relegated to these days. So for a sum in the low 6 figures, you can have the PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) of the USPTO review the patent and see if it meets the mark or not.

Apple cites figures of USD $350,000 for a PTAB review vs. a USD $3,000,000 cost for a district court review.

US tech companies sucked into Russian sanctions row

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Meh

What about US employees of the companies? Do they still report to work? Do they still get a paycheck? How does something like this work if you are employed by one of these companies?

Imagine this in a job interview:

"Why did you leave your last job?"

"The company was placed on the US sanctions list."

I'm sure that will raise a few eyebrows.

PETA calls for fish friendly Swedish street signage

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Re: Just let them fade into obscurity

The whole point of blackmarking them on mainstream media is so they get relegated to the fringe publications which are inhabited by people just as crazy as they are, if not more so. So in that case, let them have at it.

Back in the day however, PETA did do a lot of good in advancing animal rights. They got women to mostly stop wearing fur coats and such. That pissed off the furries, but oh well. A changing world means that you need to change with it or be left behind.

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Just let them fade into obscurity

PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals. Now that's an organization that I can get behind.

All joking aside, since the relevancy of PETA is...well...none, articles like this give them what they want the most: attention. People who are completely vegan are in general unhealthy and have to take supplements because our bodies are not designed to process plant matter effectively.

PETA is nothing more than the brown stain on used bathroom tissue.

US regains supercomputer crown from Chinese, for now

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Well, It's about time...

...that we in the States have reclaimed the crown.

And now for something completely different:

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, it has been stated that Data's positronic brain has a top speed of about 60 trillion calculations per second, or 60 TFLOPS. So 200,000 / 60 = 3,333.33... So with one computer, we can have 3,333 and 1/3 Datas. That would constitute a lot of Star Trek technobabble. In case you are wondering, the two episodes (that I remember where it was mentioned) are "The Measure of a Man," and "Offspring."

Something else that bears mentioning is that if you have watched Animatrix, the second renaissance is about AI powered androids. A whole race of disposable people...artificial, but still... At what point do we call them "Lifeforms" and assign rights to them? Or do we continue to treat them as slaves since they are not alive? Based upon history, I don't see the future as bright.

Hacking charge dropped against Nova Scotia teen who slurped public records from the web

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

So, accessing public documents on a public server is a crime in Canada? Interesting. I will have to remember that. At least here in the U.S., it's not a crime.

In Soviet Canada, you don't access the documents, the documents access YOU.

Nvidia quickly kills its AMD-screwing GeForce 'partner program' amid monopoly probe threat

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

nVidia sucks all around

To you nVidia fans, I'm sorry, but they suck. They suck as a company, and their hardware sucks. Every nVidia product that I have had has failed within two years of purchase. Because the warranties are only good for a year, too bad. I have ATI cards that are 15 years old and they still work. Usually, after 10 years ATI cards fail for one reason or another, which is more than 5 times longer than any nVidia card that I've had. Of course, this is my personal experience and opinion.

As to their business practices, Microsoft got their hand slapped for doing something similar in the 1990's here in the US.

US citizen sues France over France-dot-com brouhaha

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Megaphone

Here in the US...

I read about this here in the US. Basically, a french court sent an order to Web.com to transfer the domain without notification. The com/net/org/edu/mil/gov domains are for U.S. use only. Because of this, and france.com, web.com, and verisign are all based in the U.S., U.S. law applies here. Because now a different registar has control of the domain, ICANN will probably have to get involved to get it back. Oh yeah, this is going to be a messy court battle...but then again, maybe not. Since the court that issued the order is not a U.S. court, the order is invalid inside the borders of the U.S., where all the main actors are (except France).

So basically, what we have is this: A foreign government (France) has taken U.S. property belonging to a U.S. citizen without a U.S. court order, which is in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. It's basically the same thing as the U.K government sending a letter to Wells Fargo Bank to transfer all the funds from some individual in the U.S. to the U.K.'s general fund.

Um...yeah.

One other thing, might be a red herring, but the U.S. Government is specifically prohibited from owning copyrights, trademarks, etc.... So anything that the government produces (from an employee or officer) is considered to be in the public domain. Don't know about France, but since the french court order does in fact conflict with U.S. law on the face of it, France will probably lose the domain name.

The .com domain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

Oh dear... Netizens think 'private' browsing really means totally private

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

Forensic Analysis

I have just completed a comprehensive forensic analysis of Google Chrome's incognito mode. And I have to say that it does as advertised. It does not save any cookies, history, etc... to the disk. However, if you tell it to save passwords, bookmarks, or download files, those it will keep track of...but ONLY ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER!!! I think that's where people are making their mistake. Nothing can prevent websites, or your ISP from tracking you on the web as that is outside the browser's control.

Interestingly enough, there are artifacts in RAM but that is required because if the browser isn't in memory, it isn't running. As a consequence, some of that memory gets swapped to disk. However, that is also outside the control of the browser. But a user can configure Windows to clear the swap file on shutdown using a registery tweak.

Developer mistakenly deleted data - so thoroughly nobody could pin it on him!

Maelstorm Bronze badge

And apache marches on....

Recently, I was a member of a web development team writing a custom application for a client using the LAMP stack. Part of the design was that web pages that requires a huge amount of processing to generate on the fly but didn't change very often was regenerated on request by a manager through the web application. A large amount of the processing entailed many SQL queries and server processing to match up all the data. So, a manager made this request. They changed some of the data, and made the request again. The second request failed with a filesystem error. You know when they say hindsight is 20/20? The manager came to us so we were looking at the generated file. We tried generating it and it was giving us the same error. Remember, this system wasn't online yet. So I tried to make changes to the file directly and we found that we couldn't save the changes either.

After a short investigation, it was discovered that the owner of the file is www. Then it dawns on me that since the file is auto-generated, the web server is the owner of the file, and we, the developers, didn't have permission to alter it. Additionally, for some strange reason, the apache web server software was configured to use a umask of 0222 instead of 022. We had a long talk with the sysadmin who set the server up.

It was minor, but still caused problems nonetheless. After this happened, I managed to get the root password of the server from a very reluctant sysadmin. Eventually, he saw it my way. I am not going to disclose the techniques that I used to get that password though in case he might be reading this.

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Clients...

Recently, I had a client who runs a bunch of Macs for their business. This was an industrial outfit where they repaired industrial equipment. One of the ladies who *used* to work in the office screwed up the secretary's workstation (there was two). The complaint was that all icons on the desktop vanished. Being a Unix guru, I open the terminal program and go looking. I find that somehow, the owner of the desktop folder changed to a different user. Now mind you, this is inside the user's home directory. Furthermore, you have to be root to even be able to run chown, which the user account wasn't.

Once I logged into the terminal as root, I was able to change the owner back to what it was supposed to be. A logout and login later, icons were on the desktop again. Now I am no expert on Macs, but I'm still left wondering how that even happened since Unix systems (Which Mac OSX is, btw), is supposed to prevent something like that from happening.

Knock, knock. Whois there? Get ready for anonymized email addresses after domain privacy shake-up

Maelstorm Bronze badge

What bothers me is how can the EU dictate how ICANN runs the global internet? ICANN along with IANA, is responsible for the technical operation, and is contracted by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to run it. The EU only has jurisdiction within it's borders. To my knowledge, those companies who offer privacy services are actually not complying with the rules because the current rules state that the REAL information about a registerant is supposed to be public.

America yanked from the maws of cellphone complaint black hole

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Alternate facts?

A spokesman for the US telco told us: "Today’s decision on jurisdiction does not address the merits of the [FTC's] case. We are reviewing the opinion and continue to believe we ultimately will prevail."

I wasn't aware that wishful thinking was a legal theory. But then again, corporate litigators are paid to argue that 'wishful thinking' isn't what we think it is. Alternate facts anyone?

Billionaire's Babylon beach ban battle barrels toward Supreme Court

Maelstorm Bronze badge

The problem with...

...this cunt is that he thinks he can get away with it. I'll bet you that after the election, there will be an imminent domain process initiation against him. After all, it is the taking of private land by the government for public use. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

Just watch. Someone is going to get so pissed off about it that they will hook the gate to their truck and drag it down the street. It will probably even bend or break the mounting poles.

Maelstorm Bronze badge

This is going to end well...

...for the public. Ultimately, the US Federal Government owns the beaches, but it's delegated to the states to manage them. In California, nobody can own a beach. I already know how this is going to play out. SCOTUS is going to either not hear the appeal or will find in favor of the state as the state has a keen interest to maintain public access to a natural resource under the Public Use Doctrine which goes all the way back to the Roman Empire. He will be forced to pull the gate down or go to jail for contempt of court.

In the end, it doesn't matter how much money that you have. Nobody is above the law.

OpenBSD releases Meltdown patch

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Re: Still concerning ...

"So yeah, MAYBE Meltdown can be patched in microcode. Unless you've heard different from Intel... ?"

Knowing how CPUs are designed, there's not much microcode in them these days. Certain complicated instructions like the string instruction are microcoded. However, in many cases, the control units for pipelined CPUs are basically just wired logic. Intel now uses a RISC core and the execution unit breaks up the instruction into several RISC instructions, or VLIW type instructions (Itanium anyone?). Privilege checking is done on the RISC side which does not use any microcode. However, some operations can be governed by the microcode. It depends on the specific design of the CPU.

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Well...

...OpenBSD is actually respected as being the most secure OS in the world. Complement Theo de Raadt and he will thank you. Theo has some words to say about the Meltdown and Spectre flaws...aimed straight at Intel, and he was not too kind about it either...then agan, neither was Linus Torvalds. I found out 2 days ago that FreeBSD has been working on a fix. I was wondering if I had to code a fix myself and submit it.

Guess who else Spectre is haunting? Yes, it's AMD. Four class-action CPU flaw lawsuits filed

Maelstorm Bronze badge

I'm actually surprised that it took this long. A hit of 0.99% on AMD stock is like what...20 cents? They were holding the info so the software vendors could fix the flaws.

Now lets get technical. The branch predictor is 2-bit state machine, which holds numbers 0 to 3. If the branch for a particular instruction is taken, the counter counts up. If it's at 3, then it stays at three. If the predictor misses the prediction, then it counts down to 2. If it misses again, then it count's down to 1 and starts predicting that the branch is not taken. There is one for each conditional jump instruction. For i386/amd64, that's quite a few instructions. Research has shown that the 2-bit branch predictor is the best compromise between reaction time and accuracy.

These newer CPUs has fine-grain multithreading with resource allocation systems where each instruction has a profile of what hardware resources it needs to execute. The different areas of the CPU operate more or less independently of each other like an assembly line. Each instruction is allocated the hardware resources it needs to execute. When it reaches the end of the pipeline, the result is committed. If the result is needed by the next instruction, then it has to wait until it is available, or is forwarded back to previous stages of the pipeline.

I can see how this could have happened. For a toy 16-bit RISC pipeline CPU simulated in Verilog, it took 2 people over a month to design it from the ground up. Yes, I was in that project myself, and it was for an advanced computer architecture and organization class. And yes, it also had a 2-bit branch predictor. With billions of transistors, you have many people working on the design in different groups who do not necessarily talk to each other.

And yes, they do teach this stuff in the classroom.

Careful with the 'virtual hugs' says new FreeBSD Code of Conduct

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

As an insider...

As an insider....

Yeah, I'm a member of the FreeBSD community and you should have seen the uproar that it caused. Entertaining to say the least. There was no warning, no pretense, nothing to indicate that this was coming down the pike. It was just dropped into our laps by the core team admins with "Here you go." The thread started out with a blatantly insulting picture about the so called new CoC. DutchDaemon let the thread run for 8 pages before he closed it. He said there will be an internal discussion on the topic.

Personally, I do not give a rats ass about the so-called code of conduct. I will continue doing what I am doing which has worked for me for years: Treat people with respect until you have a reason not to. To quote one forum member "If a Joe wants to be called Jane, then call him Jane." Simple common sense.

El Reg, you are a week late to the party. You're slipping. Here's a link to the actual thread so you guys can read it for yourselves: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/is-the-community-become-fragile.64690/

When uploading comments to the FCC, you can now include malware

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

FCC: We are a bunch of clowns...

It wouldn't surprise me if someone uploaded some NSA hacking tools to the comment system, or even better, the stuxnet worm. So if someone downloaded it and became infected, would the FBI throw the FCC in jail? Who knows.

What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

I think we just came up with a new kids show...

Anyone remember Muppets in Space? How about Cars in Space? We can make some personalities from the Cars movie franchise.

Beware the looming Google Chrome HTTPS certificate apocalypse!

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

What did they think was going to happen?

Issue a *.google.com certificate without Google's permission and the blast it all over the inet?

What did they think was going to happen?

Maybe I should drop Chrome and move to Firefox. At least I can audit the source code.

Newsflash! Faking it until you make it is illegal in Silicon Valley: Biz boss pleads guilty

Maelstorm Bronze badge
FAIL

Fraud

Lying about yourself is not illegal. Sending fake wire transfer notices is. That's what they nailed him on. He can say all that he wants about himself having attended business school, working for a financial company, etc... As long as he doesn't try to use those lies to defraud people, it's perfectly legal.

Spectre shenanigans, Nork hackers upgrade, bad WD drives and more

Maelstorm Bronze badge
Trollface

Re: WD vuln

Are we sure that this wasn't another NSA/GHCQ mandated backdoor that was found out? These G-Men must really like the rear entry.

Nunes FBI memo: Yep, it's every bit as terrible as you imagined

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Let the investigation run its course

What I find interesting is that this was released over the Democrat's objections. It does make the FBI and DOJ look either incompetent or operating with an ulterior motive. Flynn was busted for lying to Mike Pence about meeting with the Russian ambassador. But they have been investigating this Carter person since 2013? So there are some interesting links that are being highlighted. It may give a basis for why Trump accused the Obama administration of wiretapping Trump Tower.

I do not like Trump, but I also believe that he should not be removed from office for political reasons. If he is guilty of a crime, then we will deal with that. So far, I see a lot of smoke. So it could be a fire...or it could be a smoke grenade to make people think there is a fire. At this point, we do not know. I'm for letting the special prosecutor complete the investigation and go from there. If nothing is found, then so be it.

A tiny Ohio village turned itself into a $3m speed-cam trap. Now it has to pay back the fines

Maelstorm Bronze badge

Actually, here in the USA, nobody is above the law...not even the President of the USA (Who is currently the emperor with no clothes, Donald Trump.). So if the "civil servants" are doing something illegal, they either be fined, go to jail, or both, depending on the offense. A while back (2010 I think) in Bell, CA, city most of the city counsel was arrested for various things...like pay increases... You can find the news story online.

SCOLD WAR: Kaspersky drags Uncle Sam into court to battle AV ban

Maelstorm Bronze badge

If that's the case, then every company out there can sue you if you don't buy their product or service. I think that this lawsuit will get tossed out because, after all, Kaspersky is a Russian company. The US is not exactly on friendly terms with Russia...

And there's that national security thing too...

Page: