Posts by Chairman of the Bored 956 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2017
I do not think it means what you think it means.
$word =~ s/inconceivable/drop-off/g
For me and my logs, 2016 fits a long-running pattern. A monotonic increase in Chinese(x) activity. Mostly idiotic port scans and occasionally something that makes me sit up straight and think
(x) yeah, I know attribution is tough in a spoofed or multi-hop environment, yadda yadda
Include language restricting drone engagement to Prohibited Airspace (think Washington D.C.) and maybe... just maybe... some classes of Special Use Airspace. My vote would be to contemplate drone engagement in active Restricted Areas (think major sporting events, nuclear power plant sites). [×]
If you feel a burning desire to engage drones in a certain area, man up and go through the NOTAM process and either activate existing restricted airspace or stand up a new one. That way the other airspace users know what the heck you are doing.
If something is an imminent danger? As in credible mass casualty weapon employment? Well, Intl Law holds that states have an inherent right of self defense. No need for a regulation. Blast away and explain it on CNN later.
[×] given 9/11, small aircraft crashes into the WH, the Mathis Rust incident on Red Square... It's unclear to me how any of this works in practice.
@disgruntled yank,
Cannot speak for three letter agencies, but have some DoD and other experience. No different than the rest of US Gov't.
My favorite comment concerns cluster computing on the NMCI net (choose one of 'Navy/Marine Corp Intranet' or 'No More Computer on Internet')...
I ask, "How's it goin'?"
Answer, "Um, sir... these f$ckers. Well, they put the cluster in clusterf$ck..."
Let me ignore the river of marketing BS flowing from FireEye for just a sec (*)...
...Maybe the reason smaller firms are noncompetitive is due to the fact they cannot afford the legal teams necessary to navigate through our Byzantine contracting process. I don't think this has anything to do with quality of personnel, availability of personnel, or so forth. I've seen several small- to mid-size firms absolutely at the top of their game technically unable to get Gov't contracts because they either (1) couldn't get all the paperwork together to work before their competitors caught up; or (2) saw how much $ the paperwork was going to cost them and just said "screw it ... we're not going to sell direct to the Gov't ... let's market to their prime contractors"
See: https://news.vice.com/article/why-cant-startup-companies-get-us-government-contracts
(*) Ok, I respect FireEye products but think the BS spouted here can work two ways. Do I want to hire a vendor who is so tightwad they cannot afford sufficient staff and everyone must work 80+ hour weeks? Do I want to hire a vendor who is constantly "up" because they are playing catch up?
Working your ass off is not always a sign of extreme competence.
Starting with the STS-26 return to flight mission and continuing until the end of NASA's manned program, the Shelton family would send a bouquet of roses to Mission Control. One red rose for each astronaut on mission, and one white rose in remembrance of those who had been lost.
Apparently it took NASA a while to figure out who was sending them. A simple but thoughtful gesture that probably means a lot to those who hold life and death responsibility over astronauts riding perhaps the most complicated gadget ever manufactured.
Also, as a parent I've got to hand it to the mom and dad - setting an example like that is top shelf parenting technique.
With the Prez Warning at least its fairly clear what offices generate the warnings.
But what about these Amber Alerts? I've wondered who exactly decides what unlucky kid gets featured on these. I know that the actual number of non-family forcible abductions in the US are actually fairly low ... out of something like 800,000 missing persons reports per year something in the low hundreds are what we would think of as classical kidnapping events. But I've seen precisely one Amber Alert in two years, living in the boonies but within an easy drive of major population centers. Put another way, if one of my kids disappears and there is some witness that saw them in a vehicle - does a non-connected, 9-5 working schmuck like me rate getting an alert sent out?
A guy I know had a kid disappear; witnesses saw her walk off a school bus and get coaxed into a car that drove away. His first clue was when she didn't arrive home. He had one hell of a hard time getting the police to take things seriously. Ultimately it did work out OK; it turns out that the ex-wife and in-laws decided to play a rousing game of "capture the flag" using a human being. Poor form, that.
@LDS,
Excellent points. I'd like to understand the selection process. At least for the hard sciences Nobels, I read the announcements and always come away impressed, humbled, and inspired.
For the Literature and Peace prizes? Not so much.
...these people have brains working on a much higher plane than mine.
Especially glad to see a 96 year old get the prize. I had a somewhat aged superstar employee return from a personnel review ready to go postal. Seems the branch head didn't believe he had done significant contributions, since "...most real science and engineering is done by men in their 20s and 30s. Most Nobel prizes are won by young people..."
The BH of course is a proud Harvard Preschool of Management grad. I might pee on him if he is on fire, but I'm conflicted
@Chris Evans,
Yes there are a number of things you can do. Just like Windows a quick ctrl-C will abort a rm operation taking place in an interactive shell. Destroying the window in which the interactive shell running rm is running will work, too (alt-f4 in most window managers or 'x' out of the window)
If you know the process id of the rm process you can 'kill $pid' or do a 'killall -KILL rm'
Couple of problems:
(1) law of maximum perversity says that the most important bits will be destroyed first in any accident sequence
(2) by the time you realize the mistake there is no time to kill rm before law 1 is satisfied
The OP's mad dive for the power button is probably the very best move... provided you are right there at the console. And provided the big red switch is actually connected to anything
...depending on your shell and its configuration a zero size file in each directory you care about called '-i' will force the rampaging recursive rm, mv, or whatever back into interactive mode. By and large it won't defend you against mistakes in a script, but its definitely saved me from myself when running an interactive shell.
It's proven useful enough to earn its own cronjob that runs once a week and features a 'find -type d' and touch '-i' combo on systems I like.
Glad the OP's mad dive for the power switch saved him, I wasn't so speedy once. Total bustification. Hence this one simple trick...
Now if I could ever fdisk the right f$cking disk, I'd be set!
...pencil and paper, viewgraphs, lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, m$ project in its various incantations of demon speak...
...and I've learned many valuable secrets, young grasshopper. Chief among these is, "The very finest way to remain on schedule is to write a new one daily."
This truth is invariant across all known PM tools and strategic planning fad.
You're welcome!
Nothing is so hard as to change our own behavior at middle age. It's taken me decades to move past some of the sharper uses of my tongue, and I still f$ck up routinely, but I'm a more effective engineer when I have self control.
Where it gets difficult is when something happens that requires the strongest possible condemnation, and when working with former NCOs who speak entirely in acronyms and curses...
...giving the third and fourth degree to employees who make mistakes. We all screw up security sometimes.
We need to hold people accountable but if you make penalties for even slight infractions truly Draconian, people just won't report problems. And problems do not get better with age.
P'raps my favorite piece of code. I'm slightly relieved it doesn't achieve anything though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl
The OP mentioned Los Angeles for some reason. Been there, lived that. Not sure how well the 'master/slave' construct is understood there. I think 'pimp/ho' might be more comprehensible.
...that an already INSTALLED 100BaseT infrastructure in a new build be downgraded to 10BaseT because she thought the higher speed would result in a higher total cost of ownership. No ship. The techs just said, "uh... yeah, sure! We did exactly what you said." Mumble mumble.
@DougS, Enterprises forcing users to install dodgy AV apps per BYOD? In my experience, heck yes.
I've definitely suffered far more at the hands of bad AV thab viruses. I'm thinking cleaning up the radwaste left behind by McAfee products here.
And then we have the Good for Enterprise app ecosystem - a system that sucks so badly it is indistinguishable from malware. I wonder what sort of attack surface Good presents... hmmm.
Oh heck yeah; +1 on that insight.
Life is too short to waste getting a substandard tool to more or less work, and there is a real satisfaction involved in using decent tools.
Besides, my dad always said, "Every job takes a minimum amount of money. You can try to cheat on cost but at the end of the day, why not just pay your dues up front and save some time and frustration?"
A place I worked used smart cards for all user authentication. Raving lunat... er, esteemed leader we worked for said she would rain fire and brimstone on whatever poor bastard left his card in a keyboard unattended. True to her word, she would write up formal security violation, remove door accesses, makes you pay a few hundred $ for new card, the works... even if you were talking to another guy two cubes away and in plain sight of your home cube.
Naturally her card was left in her [absolute top of the line] laptop constantly. Until some sneaky bastard used 5 min epoxy. Then it was in there semi-permanently.
Her head just about exploded.
Next some sneaky bastard - and if I ever find him drinks are totally on me - started being more subtle and just using clear nail polish on the smart card contacts. I think that was so we could enjoy watching her head explode every time an intern would come back from security empty handed and inform her Royal Highness actually did have to go in person to enroll her new card.
Fortunately she got promoted out of our misery and is now a staff infection somewhere in Washington.
Here is a pint for all sneaky bastards who make work fun!
Vegas has been getting weird, well weirder, for some time.
A family member has an on again, off again business relationship with USA Gymnastics. Back when Proctor and Gamble were still sponsors, USAG had some major events in Vegas. Then news about the pedo doctor Larry Nassar and USAG's cover-up hit.
I was hanging out near the venue and saw some people quietly and not unreasonably exercising their 1st amendment rights of assembly and speech against USAG. Hotel security engaged, followed by Las Vegas' own. Beat a guy who refused to leave.
I thought the goal was to "serve and protect" the public, not serve as the hotel PR office's goons.
Its almost as if the whole effen place is run by the mob or something. Oh, wait...
My brother worked for an audio firm that made a lot of the radio kit used by McD's, and in particular their drive through operations.
Since cost is of concern and crypto in the public domain was perceived by the authorities as dodgy (maybe even satanic), the radios were simple VHF/FM, with at best analog spectrum inversion for "security".
So some guys took it on themselves to take over drive through ops using their own radios. Example(*)
McD: "You want fries with that?"
Guy, very quickly: "Good God, man! His ass is half the size of Texas already, why does he need fries?"
Drive: "WTF!!??"
McD "I'm sorry..."
Guy: "Dude, seriously. There's already a couple thousand calories in that feed sack..."
As drive throughs are a large fraction of gross receipts managers would call the audio firm and demand immediate fixes...
I imagine these days its digital radio and AES. Now if I just had a nice software defined radio. Oh, wait. I do.
(*) Any resemblance between these words and anything I might or might not have transmitted is ... simply a coincidence, your honor.
Aye! A pint, sir, excellent comments.
My first thought is that having your ship together before blathering to the press should be considered a core organizational capability.
My second thought is... damnit! Those window washers were not Iranian spies?? I wasted some illegals for nothi..? Damn, brb... gotta call someone...
I was in Dallas for a meeting of my own tribe and was quietly enjoying an adult beverage at the hotel bar.
Guy next to me thinks I part of the Civil Engineers' convention in the same hotel. He and his polyester tie swing around and he gives me a solid handshake, booming out "Hi! Sam's the name and $h!t's the game!" I think you could've heard him in NZ.
That was ... different.
I wonder of that's the kind of guy buying this Oracle shi..., er, KIT! I said "kit", ok?
How tall was Bin Laden? If I remember correctly it was listed as 6' 5" / 1.95m. Bad old days. We had these playing cards with photos and descriptions on the back ... the theory being the information would get absorbed into your head somehow (dont ask). If I remember correctly he was the ace of spades.
My guy was only 5' 10" or so, otherwise I would have turned him in for the $ years ago.
Proud veteran of Operation Enduring Clusterf$ck...
...who was US Govt employee, but looked *precisely* like a slightly shorter version of Osama Bin Laden. Same mannerisms, mode of dress, and so forth.
Flying into the U.S. we got pulled from the queue and my guy postures up a bit and says importantly, "I am a government employee."
But CBP Agent doesn't bat an eyelash, change expression, or anything. He just says drily, "Absolutely. If you say so, sir, you are. But the question becomes, for which government do you work?"
Excellent as usual. I'm slightly surprised though that you didn't mention the porno firm's lawyers are the "up and coming" legal experts in this area of law.
Maybe a reference to their paralegals being busy little beavers.
Something about the fact the rights holders are not gonna take this lyin down...
Titillating content though. Damn, what were you talking about?
Had a colleague shift himself off the mortal coil not too long ago. I make no judgement concerning his decision; I can't pretend to understand his battle. We all have one.
Only sign I saw and missed is that he sorted his office and gave me a couple of very nice hardbound handbook sets I've had a habit of borrowing. I just thought he was straightening up the space and being very generous. Seemed a-ok. No problems. Next day, he's gone. No note, no last words to family or anyone, just gone.
Nobody else saw a thing.
I guess the lesson is that we've got to let people know we appreciate them here and now; things tomorrow can be very different.
A tough part about getting old is seeing the mortality of those around you; at some point human needs break through the masks and we realize 'that forgetful guy' is really struggling with major issues, and we are not far behind.
Tough experience for me recently was when a colleague died suddenly. Going through another guys desk to separate personal effects from company property. Then going through the email spool for the same purposes and "curating" some of the archival record to avoid any upsetting the family further... just not a good task.
Oddly enough, of the places I've lived in the US the only places I've seen where the police drive marked cars home are the relatively large and prosperous bedroom communities around Washington and New York.
The theory is that this deters crime. The reality is twofold: it makes the cop's house a target for petty vandalism when the car is not present, and it makes for a lot of whining about 'lazy ass gub'mpnit workers, never on the job' when the car is present
I'm in the boonies now and the theory is that money is tight and we cannot afford the luxury of one car per patrolman, so the car goes with the shift, not the man. I'm ok with that.
BUT! That said we apparently have enough cash for a plate camera on every traffic light and damned near every lamp post.
Annnnd, if you drive near the sheriff's office your cellular will on occasion get pushed down to 2G suddenly ...with no network connectivity and a cell ID that is unique and nonsensical... despite ample 4G signal. Sometimes this happens near their 'inicident command post' SUV.
Had to buy a "low boy" flatbed trailer for very large piece of gear. On this side if the pond one of the better manufacturers of tractor trailer equipment is the "Eager Beaver" company.
Needed to print out a data sheet, Fat fingered URL. And you know what? The web experience at eager beaver dot com is fundamentally different than that at eager beaver TRAILERS dot com.
Even though I killed the session after a single "damn!" I set of the pr0n alert and promptly had a long day on my hands....
Listen to this and you will get an appreciation that zero loss is only half the story... Meissner effect is equally interesting and useful. But the field repulsion requires flux pinning... And flux pinning is the tip of the iceberg of nonideal effects that make practical application of SC very difficult.
Manufacture of superconductors to achieve desired pinning properties is a mixture of nano engineering and black magic. Black magic of the most evil sort. There is some decent discussion of the economics of SC and so on:
http://omegataupodcast.net/285-superconductivity/
Omega Tau's podcasts are by and large excellent. Except of course when they are extraordinary.
We are seeing how science is supposed to work. I propose, and others dispose. Last man standing is your winner. Its ugly but we've got a lot as a civilization to show for it. Where Pons and Fleischman left the script with cold fusion is when they and their uni went straight to the press and tried to short circuit the normal process.
High temp superconductors as we know them now are very interesting physically... the Nobel committee has certainly found that true... but they've not seen as much use as type 2 low temp materials. Look at the magnets in ITER, CERN, or even your local friendly MRI machine. Whats going on here is that as much as liquid helium is a pain in the tail to deal with, liquid He plus low temp material solutions are cheaper in terms of total cost of ownership than the current HTS materials at liquid nitrogen temps. This is subject to change as manufacturing engineering chips away at the problem.
Economics gets a vote. Even assuming these guys' claim is good... and from the looks of things thats charitable... given the extreme cost of HTS materials today the best I can give you is a warm, hearty "meh" until costs are understood for another material class.
Aye! CANON. Damn. I didn't see any intel these were coming in.
OK, I've got some Intel on what we do about these. It's not all bad news
Without drivers the CANON are immobile. At at present their Win 10 drivers refuse to work, and their Linux drivers are bloated and slow. Other drivers? Generally suck but occasionally the enemy gets a good one. At any rate maybe this buys us enough time for the boffins to get LART tested. Looks interesting but this is an effen battlefield, not a science fair.
Push your scouts in a bit, we need to know what sort of CANON these are. If its a single function laser CANON, that's a right nasty piece of work. We need to drop back, plan a bit and maybe engage with indirect fires. If its an all-in-one we're in luck - the enemy is almost never able to buy enough supplies for these units. Send 'em a black fax so they shoot their wad. Or if you've got a good man, have him run off 5,000 photocopies of his butt cheeks and leave them by the machine. No one will use it for days - psych warfare, mind.
The real question is, who the hell is funding the PLF to get these CANON in the first place? Ideas?
My guess is the purchase card office or contracts have got something to do with it. Fsck'em.
P-card is pretty small, you can probably reduce it with a couple 'o Javelin. Contracts? We do this the American way ... we're gonna blow it right off the map; I will go to higher authority and get the aircraft - make sure there is an FO team in place to start the music when I get a gig...
Thanks for the info. Mt regards to the men for a good job. Now we both have work to do...
Good report, soldier! It sounds like you and the men are making progress. Make sure they are rested today and have a man look after their kit. Tonight's mission will be rather special- I want you to figure out why the hell the big HP in HR is doing port scans. Doesn't happen often so make sure someone on point has an eye peeled.
Bloody sneaky bastards these new printers. Back in my day you could grab em by the Centronics cable and bash their heads into the fscking wall. Now they're wireless. But I've got total confidence in you.
Now remember, man. Got to keep your spirits up because this game is for keeps. We don't have an "lp0 on fire" error message for the hell of it. You may have to set a couple of the Lenovos on fire to degrade enemy morale. I guess they would do it to you, so make damn sure that any printer you engage becomes a dead 'un.
I shall report to higher authority that you are executing the mission successfully.
That is all, you're dismissed.
Quite. But remember that 30 odd years ago, men were men; women were women; printers only tried to print.
Today I've got something on my desk that tries to do a bit much. Its only really solid attribute is getting me to waste $ on ink cartridges
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