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User: bjb_admin

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Comments · 48

  1. Hemisphere on Upside-Down Sensors Caused Proton-M Rocket Crash · · Score: 1

    It wasn't that they were installed upside down, they were installed for a southern hemisphere launch!

  2. Re:lol wat on Hacker Releases 1.7TB Treasure Trove of Gaming Info · · Score: 1

    4. Don't drop the soap

  3. Logan's run on Tracking Whole Colonies Shows Ants Make Career Moves · · Score: 2

    The old ants know they either have to go to Carousel or leave the colony!

  4. Activation code on WW2 Carrier Pigeon and Undecoded Message Found In Chimney · · Score: 1

    Actually this is the second part of a message.

    First Message reads:
    Sorry to hear of the russian porn infecting your computer old chap.

    Will send activation code once we can get through to India so you can reinstall.

  5. Source on Huawei Offers 'Complete and Unrestricted' Source Code Access · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does the Australian Govt have anyone that can actually properly security audit this? I am sure they are not going to want to spend the money to hire someone who can. Also, who is to say the binary blob firmware doesn't have a back door. Its not like the Australians are going to compile it and install it themselves.

  6. Re:Why not set up interstitial pages? on FBI To Shut Down DNSChanger Servers Monday -- But Should It Cut Off 300k PCs? · · Score: 2

    It would probably be better to redirect them to Rick Roll (No I will not put the URL here).

  7. Re:Crude Humor and Mild Violence on Microsoft To Offer Flight For Free This Spring · · Score: 1
  8. Warp core explosion on MIT's New Camera Can Take 1 Trillion Frames Per Second · · Score: 1

    Would that give me time to draw a happy face on a warp core explosion?

  9. Security updates on Can Maintenance Make Data Centers Less Reliable? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sometimes I get the feeling that security updates can in most cases cause more problems than the issues themselves.

    I can think of many occasions that a security update has broken a server/router/etc. Obviously the lack of a security update can lead to a bigger headache in the future. But the typical user doesn't understand and has the attitude "IT broke the server again".

    If a virus or hacker causes an issue the attitude is "I hope they fix that soon. I hate viruses/hackers" (obviously this is a huge generalization).

  10. Re:Doesn't really tell the full story... on Worldwide Support For Nuclear Power Drops · · Score: 1

    During the blackout of 2003 Niagara Falls was one of the few areas that still had power because of the Hydro dams.

  11. The Landing on NASA Rover 'Curiosity' Set For Saturday Launch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wow the landing video shows how complicated this one is.

    The whole hanging by a crane held up by a thruster module seems quite scary. Especially considering it couldn't be tested at Earth.

    Guess there will be lots of nail biting when the landing comes! Hopefully there is live telemetry for the landing.

  12. Developers on Dual-Core Android PC Now Comes On a USB Stick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can understand developers would like this, since the android emulator in the SDK is slower than molasses in (northern) December. I suppose ICS would not be an issue to get on this for the future.

    But $200 seems a little steep since a real tablet can be purchased for that price range (although with perhaps with less CPU/RAM). $50-$100 would probably be the sweet point.

    Actually this reminds me of something I thought of when Siri came out. How long is it going to take for someone to come out with a screenless / keypadless phone that is pure voice recognition (built into a headset like a BT headset??)? Same thing for GPS units (rather than being distracted by a map you just have to listen to the directions, much like having a person reading you directions "like in the old days"). That would extend battery life, reduce costs, although would also reduce it to the basic functionality (sorry no angry birds).

  13. Re:Open resolvers on Potential 0-Day Vulnerability For BIND 9 · · Score: 1

    That is not the issue I was having. These were remote TXT lookups to a remote domain with a large TXT record. It was always looking up the same host and same TXT payload. No recursion stopped that issue. These were very regular at one or 2 second intervals. Probably would make a good bandwidth DDNS if you had access to enough recursive BIND servers, and could send requests with forged source IPs (which today is harder to do due to better filtering at the ISP's). Thus one small DNS request is multiplied several hundred times in size, like the old Smurf PING attacks.

  14. Open resolvers on Potential 0-Day Vulnerability For BIND 9 · · Score: 2

    I am glad I took my lumps and disabled public recursive resolving many years ago on my BIND installations. Only do that for local IP ranges! This eliminates all the resolver issues. Also I found that when the DNS server was open I was getting a constant stream of unusual TXT lookups which were for oddball domains. These contained many K of data. I suspect these requests were fake source IP requests being used as some sort of bandwidth DOS attack.

  15. Re:Seriously unsurprising on ATM Repairman Accused of Taking (and Faking) Cash · · Score: 1

    I would like to think so too. When I developed a point of sale system in the mid 90's which used dial-up for CC verification there was no encryption involved at the time. But it did use a custom protocol specific to that CC processor which required an NDA to be signed. So it was security through obscurity. I guess most transactions are done through the internet today and use encryption and for simplicity dial-up would have inherited this as well (probably using a PPP IP connection instead of these custom serial protocols but I am only guessing on this, maybe that is too simple a solution for the banks). I suppose a real hard core thief could have patched into the phone line used for CC authorization, pretended to be the host by reverse engineering previous transactions using a phone line sniffer and authorized all transactions while making purchases. But that is a lot of work a relatively small payoff.

  16. Reason for click on Samsung HD Unit Bought By Seagate · · Score: 1

    Does anyone here know what is actually causing the clicking? Thrown head? Bad board on the drive? Miniscule error on track 0 of the disk? I know of a person who had the click of death on their hard drive and sent it in for data recovery. It took about a week but the recovery company was able to recover 99% of the data (I don't know why 1% was missing, perhaps just junk files that didn't matter, but all the documents were there). Cost was about $1800.00 for the 200Gb worth of data.

  17. Re:During arrest on FBI Executes 40 Search Warrants For 'Anonymous' · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of when the police roughed up a fellow during the G20 protests in Canada, when asked what his name was he answered (truthfully) Adam Nobody. Yes, his surname was legally Nobody. That answer didn't go over so well though.

  18. Re:You are correct, but on Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet? · · Score: 1

    I believe the aliens think this propulsion method is based anal probing, considering the legacy left "behind" by their past visits.

  19. School assignments on Wikipedia Explains Today's Global Outage · · Score: 1

    How many kids will go to school tomorrow and say they couldn't complete an assignment because Wikipedia is down?

  20. Re:Don't worry on New iPhone Attack Kills Apps, Reroutes Web Traffic · · Score: 1

    As long as the virus database has only one entry in it Norton will be fine.

  21. Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me on Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye- and Hair-Color Screening · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh, and the white ones fetch a higher price on the black market.

    Does that mean that the black ones fetch a higher price on the white market?

  22. Force garbage collection on Java Gets New Garbage Collector, But Only If You Buy Support · · Score: 1

    I thought to force garbage collection you do FRE(0) ?

  23. Microsofts view on cores on Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust · · Score: 4, Funny

    No need for parallel computing all cores are already used.

    Core one: For the OS
    Core two: Anti-virus
    Core three: Anti-Spyware / Windows Defender
    Core four: Firewall
    Core five: Windows update notifications and installations
    Core six: Windows Genuine advantage checks
    Core seven: Eye Candy (Vista) with XP you get a bonus CPU
    Core eight: What ever the user wants to run, except when you get a virus, then
    you have to share it with the SPAM bot.

    Guess we will be waiting for 16 core CPU's.

    Oh and don't start me on memory requirements :-)