Posts by SotarrTheWizard 105 posts • joined 14 Jan 2016
. . . .this is looking at national-level activities. As in, run by your local flavor of .gov.
But, overall, while .US may have a massive offensive cyber infrastructure (at least I hope they do, if not, why am I paying taxes for "Cyber Command" ??? ), defensively, we're crap.
The best allegory I can think of, is World War 2 Tanks. The US is a German Tiger II Panzer. Superb gun, amazing armor, technologically sophisticated. . . . and breaks down every 20 miles or so.
As opposed to the Russians, Chinese, etc, who bring massive fleets of T-34s to the field. Because Quantity has a Quality all its' own. And they rely on constantly Zerging targets. . . .
According to several studies I've seen, the top oceanic plastic polluters are China, Indonesia, and the Phillipines.
Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting-the-oceans-the-most/
I've also seen reports that put Phillipine rivers as the worst individual offenders:
https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
And people wonder why I have a Filabot. I don't even need to buy plastic pellets to feed my 3-d printer, most months. . .
. . . .are the pimps^h^h^h^h^h recruiters who demand to talk about your feelings and who you are as a person. Especially when you look up the vegetable-that-walks-like-a-man on LinkedIn, and found that only a few months before, they were running a Payless Shoe Store, or were a "Customer Service Manager" at a car rental firm. or, best of all, were a "Banquet Captain" at some Event Facility.
And then you find out about the ridiculous fees that the pimps charge companies that they procure for. . . . .
. . . I ran a SOC team, and we were constantly seeing indicators of possible, or failed attacks. And, by contract, were supposed to report each and every one on initial detection. Which generally resulted in manglement reacting in typical spring-loaded fashion.
We ended up designating "possibles" as FLUFFY BUNNY incidents, and the disposition went to two categories: Actual attempts with any degree of success became WASCAWWY WABBITS, and all FLUFFY BUNNY incidents proven to be false alarms or unsuccessful were listed in the daily FUDD report.
In the 15 months I ran that shop, only one mangler realized that we were doing it, because they went all Looney Toons over the slightest issue. . . (Grin)
Really ?? Looking at a particularly overblown novel as the future pattern of .us ?
If you haven't noticed. Evangelcals have nowhere as much of the political push as they had in the 1980s. when the "Moral Majority" and "Christian Coalition" were ascendant in Republican politics. . . .
People identifying as 'religious' are down, as well as membership in churches. . .
Why, indeed ? Because it's the law: the 2003 US-UK Extradition Treaty, as ratified by the 2003 Extradition Act, as passed by Parliament, and ratified on the US side by the United States Senate in 2006.
Extradition treaties and agreements are generally between 2 nations, and "international norms" do not apply.
I had the same (major brand redacted so they won't lob a sueball at me . . ) Multi-function Inkjet with photo printing capability as the home network printer for 5+ years. Output was indistinguishable from a laser, wife needed the photo printing for her freelance graphics work, and we all used the onboard scanner.
One day a message pops up: print head is end of life, return printer for servicing . It also informed me that I could download a special utility, with my registered owner email address and the printer serial number, which would allow a generous 50 more pages to be printed. Downloaded and ran, and would get a countdown popup for every page printed.
Called the 1-800 number. . . which, of course, was closed outside of business hours and on weekends.
Eventually found out that the nearest service location was several hundred miles off, the price was more than I had paid for the printer in the first place, and, oh yes, the turnaround time was between 60 and 90 days. . . .
Went out an bought a replacement printer (of a different brand) for less than they wanted for the repair.
And then the wife, daughters, and I, took it out to the back yard, and re-enacted a certain scene from "Office Space". . .
Long before I did IT, I was a Geologist, at least by training. The Yellowstone Caldera "clock" is an average, as I recall, one of the intervals was ~960K years.
The interesting one is the Continental Glacial Advances, we're still in an Ice Age, and geologically speaking, the next one is due Real Soon Now. Admittedly, that's in a Geologic time frame, which translates to "any time in the next 5-10K years, beginning yesterday. . . "
Which makes the current Solar Minimum of special interest: do we get another "Little Ice Age". . . or a big one. . .
. . . with an infected death rate of ~0.6%, simply because the overall numbers, while horrible, are constantly being reinforced by personal examples in the media. Yet, compared to the Spanish flu, those are small numbers, and while slightly more deadly than the 1968 Flu Pandemic (H3N2), yet significantly less deadly than the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic.
I suspect that the now ubiquity of the Net and Social media is a big part of that driver . . .
. . . . the FBI has added tattoos, scars, and marks to it's "IAFIS" Fingerprint/ID system. How do I know ?? 15 years ago, I was on the Requirements team, and helped to write the Requirements Traceability and Validation Matrix document.
So, cops using tats for identification has been standard technique in .us for at least 10 years. . .
We lerns gud in Murica!!! And we gots the self-steem awards to prove it!!
(Note: and this is why we homeschooled our children. THEY can read and write, do math, and know actual history. The oldest is the de-facto helpdesk at work: Helldesk comes to HER when they're stumped. Both also code far better than I do. . .)
. . . is to go check ThePirateBay or other torrent site. I'm sure it's there already. I remember the last time a country tried suppressing a book: the UK banned a book called "Spycatcher", late 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher
It eventually, did not succeed. Not that I have much interest in Snowden's book, but all the current actions will do is de-monetize it. . .
. . .some of us already have one. You still wait months for it to "cross over". And if you're particularly lucky. . . .then you get scheduled for a session on The Box.
Which is an order of magnitude MORE joy, because apparently older folks, IT folks, and people with medical issues are nearly impossible to get a solid read on. . . so you get re-scheduled to take it again, a month or three later. . . and it's back to the off-site meeting room in the meantime . . .
Way back when, I flew jets for the USAF. The FIRST portion of Pilot or Navigator school is Aerospace Physiology. All the lovely things that happen to the human body at altitude. Farting is just the start. And the 8,000 foot cabin altitude of civilian jetliners is easy: military cabins are typically at 10K feet pressure altitude.
We learned, early on, which foods produce the most gas, and more importantly, which ones make you sleepy. And, as part of the training, we did altitude chamber "rides". Trust me, when you re-pressurised to 8-10K after everyone being on oxygen and cabin altitude at 38K, it was enough to gag a maggot. . .
Not really. I got zapped by the US Gov OMB hack. . . their monitoring and "repair" service is absolutely worthless. But it gives me near-weekly updates on any registered sex offenders within ~20 miles. A feature I neither wanted or needed.
When someone tried to open an account in my name, I got a warning from the BANK, who thought it dodgy. It took a MONTH for the OMB "MyIDCare" to even show the queries.
. . . just got email from Equifax. I now have to PROVE I have Identity Theft protection, or accept theirs. And the payout will, ***SURPRISE** be lower.
To quote:
"Because of the number of individuals who have selected the alternative compensation cash payment, the amount you receive may be substantially less than $125.
Click this box if you want to keep the alternative compensation cash payment. Your payment may be substantially lowered, depending on the number of valid claims filed.
In order to verify your claim, please provide the name of your credit monitoring service that you will have for at least the next six months:"
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