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User: fatphil

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  1. Re:Plausible deniability on New Tool Hides Data In Plain Sight On HDDs · · Score: 1

    The guys who are using two will probably give up the information they were trying to keep secret, and if so possibly survive.

    The guys who are only using one will not survive.

    So there's no incentive for the latter set to use it at all.

    *Everything* about using TrueCrypt says "keep beating me with the rubber hose".

  2. Re:I am currently a terrorism suspect (no joke) on WikiLeaks Releases Guantanamo Prisoner Files · · Score: 1

    Brit; perturbed by the authorities' dumbness; use of the term 'meejahor' - are you sure you're no relation to the comedian Mark Thomas?

  3. Re:Infected with moles on WikiLeaks Releases Guantanamo Prisoner Files · · Score: 2

    He's indeed almost completely opinion. And a little bit of matter, and a relatively small amount of additional energy. But he's mostly opinion.

  4. Re:Hmmm on Apple: "We must Have Comprehensive Location Data" · · Score: 1

    Only fools (own up to) read(ing) EULAs. If you read the EULA you are giving it credibility. Everything in the EULA is going to be misleadingly worded and full of euphemisms so that you agree on paper to something that, if you knew what it actually referred to, you would never agree to.

    If you give it credibility, and help give it teeth, then you're unfortunately part of the problem.

  5. Re:Speciest on All Languages Linked To Common Source · · Score: 1

    That's a very wordy translation, I prefer the King Quentin translation:

    Dolphin, motherfucker - do you click it?

  6. Re:Atheist claims have other fundamental problems on All Languages Linked To Common Source · · Score: 1

    Most Atheists I know do argue that there's no god. They believe that the properties ascribed to such an entity are in contradiction with the perceived reality. Or that the properties ascribed to such an entity are logically inconsistent. Either of which is enough for an active belief that there can be no god.

  7. Re:Binding Params on Massive SQL Injection Attack Compromises 380K URLs · · Score: 1

    Disagree completely. SQL injection is where the payload is executed as SQL, which has happened in this defacement attack. On slashdot, if I write a line of SQL it's not executed as SQL, it's just text characters that are never executed.

  8. Re:Old news, but thank God! on Nokia - No More Symbian Phones After 2012 · · Score: 1

    Thanks for that link. Linux was never designed to be a competitor to Symbian. It was initially a research project, that's all. The early products just became so popular that the upper levels of management got greedy. Even though I'm a 100% maemo guy (I refuse to call the upcoming phone a 'meego' device), I've never suggested or wanted them to move away from Symbian. We had more than enough headcount on the linux-based projects, we just had the wrong heads in too many places.

  9. Re:Binding Params on Massive SQL Injection Attack Compromises 380K URLs · · Score: 1

    Well, to answer my own question, it is a SQL injection using an update, as I postulated, according to a victim:
    """
    We got the same problem this morning. classic case of sql injection: you don't seem to check the parameters you got via URL. take a look to the webserver access logs - you will see update statements!
    """

  10. Re:Binding Params on Massive SQL Injection Attack Compromises 380K URLs · · Score: 1

    I pulled up a few infected pages, and if I were to perform the same attack, I'd want to get some kind up 'update tablename set field="payload"' being executed by the server. And that would be a SQL injection.

    How do you see XSS executing on a client machine affecting every record in a database on the server?

  11. Re:Construct the array and placeholders in paralle on Massive SQL Injection Attack Compromises 380K URLs · · Score: 1

    Replace
    my $places = join(",", ("?")x@list);

    With
    my $places = ('?,'x$#list) . '?';

    For an order of magnitude increase in efficiency. You don't want an array, don't create a temporary one, just go straight to the string you want.

    However, if you've got such long lists that even that 'x' is expensive - just have a prepared string of ?,?,?,?,?,?,?.... and use substr of the appropriate length.

  12. Re:Old news, but thank God! on Nokia - No More Symbian Phones After 2012 · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure it wasn't EXA2, this was about 4 years ago. I never got my hands on the kernel itself, alas. I forget if I saw much code at all! Quite what I was doing in the project I don't know. Tea-boy, I guess.

    What you say makes Nokia Eloping with Microsoft even more infuriating.

  13. Re:But... Phong is wrong on Pioneer Anomaly Solved By 1970s Computer Graphics · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And the earth isn't round either. It's just a closer approximation to reality than
    saying the earth is flat. Or saying that Pioneer is a spherical cow. Scientists aren't looking for something that is right rather than wrong, they are looking for something that bounds the error term in a significantly tighter way. Phong apparently does this. Presumably any ad-hoc model that approximated reality closer than what was done before would have also decreased the error bounds.

    And Oren-Nayar? Have you mistaken Pioneer for a slab of concrete?

  14. Re:Old news, but thank God! on Nokia - No More Symbian Phones After 2012 · · Score: 1

    Odd. I fail to see the beauty. I worked on a collaboration with Symbian a while back (I represented the H/W vendor), and made my anti-Symbian views felt quite clearly right at the start (OK, just after I owned up to being a proud and happy owner of a Psion V, which caused several minutes of fun diversion into history). I was most impressed by the way that their devs replied to each of my complaints with "yes, if we could design it again, we'd not do it that way". It wasn't far away from what I'd prefer, but the few issues I had were so very pervasive, right at the fundamental core OS design, and hard, impossible for me, to overlook.

  15. Re:Impact on work performance? on Cocaine Found At Kennedy Space Center · · Score: 1

    and what's being performed.

    One of the post popular alcohol-abuse-including jobs in the part of the world near me is truck driver.

  16. Re:Impact on work performance? on Cocaine Found At Kennedy Space Center · · Score: 1

    I was under the impression that there are a lot of high-functioning professionals who are only-slightly-secret occasional-to-regular cocaine users who were not addicted. I got that impression from working with a bunch of them. Brilliant engineers and scientists. Not one addict between them.

  17. Re:I will be closing my BOA account.... on Anonymous Leaks Internal Bank of America Emails · · Score: 1

    You having no idea what my point is ties in very closely with you saying contradictory things consecutive posts, and even contradictory things within the same post. I think you need to slow down both when reading and when writing.

  18. Re:The Science of Brew Masters on The Science of Stout Beer · · Score: 1

    That's got to be the US. I think science is killing beer. The sahtis of Finland, the koduolu of Estonia, the kamiskais of Lativa, the Kaimiskas of Lithuania, are mostly brewed by people who quite simply don't give a crap about the numbers, and the floccing fuckulation, and they are some of the tastier beers I've tasted. OK, they're fragile, and perhaps could be given a slightly longer shelflife were more science to be applied, but I'm prepared to pay the cost for experiencing their art, as I travel to drink them fresh.

    Where I used to live also had a local college with a brewing course. All the science in the world, and they were still producing terribly flawed beers. I think a prerequisite for such a course is having brewed 10 homebrews, so that you will have learnt to recognise what can go wrong even if you can't explain why it went wrong. You have to feel it first. Science can only help if you have an unthinking feel for what you're doing. (I don't consider things like "practice good hygiene" to be science, that's just common sense.)

    I say this as someone who has won local home-brewing competitions, but has never measured anything with any accuracy at all after my first 2 or 3 brews. (I guess I've done 50+ now.) My gut feel has also lead me to, whilst not technically flawed, horrific brews too, but that happens when you get experimental. I once accidentally made brut champagne! (Which I find horrific.)

  19. Re:The right way to do it. on The Science of Stout Beer · · Score: 1

    "draught" having the same root as "drawn", indeed.

    But these guys are talking about "draft" beers instead (from bottles and cans too). To me, a draft is a sketchy approximation that you come up with before you do the real thing.

  20. Re:The science of better Guinness on The Science of Stout Beer · · Score: 1

    It's started to improve in very recent years. That is after reaching pretty much rock bottom. I only know one country with a worse beer scene than Ireland of the noughties, and that's the one I live in. As a beer nut, that's a little frustrating, but my goodness it's a great excuse to travel.

  21. Re:The science of better Guinness on The Science of Stout Beer · · Score: 1

    The best Guinness I've drunk was in Ireland, and it was indeed quite good. However, the Murphys and Beamish were generally better, and the Porterhouse stouts wiped the floor with it. The single worst Guinness I had in Ireland was in the Guinness Storehouse museum's bar ("free" with your 14e entry to the museum). More depressing than seeing how little Guinness cared about the quality of their brewing was to see all the damn tourists who wouldn't know a brewing flaw lap that muck up as if it was actually good. Sheep.

  22. Re:The science of better Guinness on The Science of Stout Beer · · Score: 1

    "Bass Pale Ale or Dogfish Head Shelter Pale Ale."

    Bass Pale Ale is not good beer. It's brewed by InBev, the largest brewery company in the world, run by beancounters rather than people who care about the taste of the beer. The quality (i.e. reproducability) is reasonable, it's just always predictably not good. I've always thought DFH were poor on the quality front (good at their best, but very poor at their worst (fort, bletch)), and it's nice to see someone place them alongside a beer that is so bad. You've reinforced my negative view of DHF whilst you were attempting to praise it.

    However, what you say about focussing on good drinks, ones respected for the craft and care of the brewer/distiller/blender, is a view I share.

  23. Re:The science of better Guinness on The Science of Stout Beer · · Score: 1

    Urquell?

    Which bit of Urquell do you think hasn't been owned by SABMiller since the 90s? And yes the beancounters that come with being part of the 2nd largest brewing company in the world do make them brew with adjuncts. Even in the 80s the quality wasn't so brilliant (they were a national brand run by beancounters), and they've steadily got worse since. It's mass market swill - you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise. However, there are hundreds of worse brands out there, don't get me wrong (anything in a clear bottle is a poorer quality brand than anything in a green bottle is a pretty good generalisation, but most things in green bottles are poor quality.)

    If you want to keep holding the Urquell brand in respect, go to the brewery tap, as you can still get the kvasnicovy, which is a very good beer, as it's brewed with care, in small quantities, aged correctly, and is unfiltered and pasteurised. Basically the exact opposite of the crap in the green glass bottle.

  24. Re:I will be closing my BOA account.... on Anonymous Leaks Internal Bank of America Emails · · Score: 1

    "How would a multimillion dollar corporation change 30% in value over a week and then back?!?!"

    It doesn't need to. Stock price doesn't measure value, it measures perceived future value. And as someone who works at Nokia, I know everything there is to know about losing 30% of your stock price...

  25. Re:WANTED: 1U low-power rack server on ARM Chips Designed For 480-Core Servers · · Score: 1

    Do any of the later offerings that followed ShivaPlug, such as GuruPlug, do what you want?