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User: devitto

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  1. Re:There is some value in theater on Congress Wants Your TSA Stories · · Score: 1

    No - Security Theatre is always harmful, by definition. Deterrents, are a different kind of thing.

  2. Re:There is some value in theater on Congress Wants Your TSA Stories · · Score: 1

    I went to bton.ac.uk and now live in Bournemouth - home of the Conservative annual conference, so I know what you're talking about.

    However those armed cops are mostly to ensure that ram-raids of suicide bombers don't get through, and to make sure that armed cops are immediately to hand, if needed.

    Obviously, they didn't stop The Grand getting blown up with the Prime Minister and entire ruling party inside - but that's not why they are there.

    Anyways, it's always funny watching hot-hatches U-turn well before the checkpoints :-)

  3. Re:There is some value in theater on Congress Wants Your TSA Stories · · Score: 1

    Though @cheekyjohnson makes good points, the fact is that Security Theatre is not a risk deterrant, like cameras or handguns.
    Deterrents are perfectly well understood and accepted risk reduction techniques.

    Security Theatre's aim is to mislead those at risk into believing security is better than it is - and to fool them into making poor judgement.

    A major risk after 9/11 was that people wouldn't want to fly, so extra security checks at that time were effective against terrorism, and reasonable deterrants.

    Now the Security Theatre measures taken are almost entirely ineffective, but portrayed as highly effective, leaving people at the same level of risk, but unable to judge the true level.

  4. Re:There is some value in theater on Congress Wants Your TSA Stories · · Score: 1

    Oh dear, you are wrong - Theatre is BY DEFINITION harmful - it is NOT like security-through-obscurity, or deterrents.

    Cameras are deterants, and reduce unwelcome behavior - fact.
    Theatre is like changing the graphs to indicate 'crime is reducing' - it prevents people from making correct decisions.

  5. Re:There is some value in theater on Congress Wants Your TSA Stories · · Score: 1

    Oh dear, you are wrong - Theatre is BY DEFINITION harmful - it is NOT like security-through-obscurity, or deterrents.

    Theatre is where the objective is to deceive - to make people believe they are secure, when they are not.

    That means you can't reasonably make judgement calls, or drive appropraite changes.

  6. Re:And the geek shall inherit the earth... on The Engineer Who Stopped Airplanes From Flying Into Mountains · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Re:And the geek shall inherit the earth..." - and some plough into it by accident.

    5% of commercial airlines still weren't running a Terrain awareness and warning system.

    Don't worry about the 5% - that number is decreasing all the time, one way or another.....

  7. Re:Fucking ground this fleet. on World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say · · Score: 1

    It'll be 'pilot error' - he should have checked over the world's largest plane for cracks that (obviously, not like these)- are not harmless.

    Condolences to the families and friends of those who die.

  8. Re:40,000 over 10 years? on Chance To Snap Up Your Own Observatory · · Score: 2

    Well, it would be hard to ask those not getting the benefit to pay, so maybe that's 100 members who pop in, maybe 3 nights a year, or 6 nights a years in pairs.
    £4000 a year, for 100 members is £400 a member - with the commitment that you'll be able to find 100 such members for the next 10 years.
    All in all, if the members don't / can't pay - or don't think it's worth the money, fair enough.

  9. @OceanMarketing is now @OceanStratagy on PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade · · Score: 2

    FYI, Ocean Marketing is now Ocean Stratagy - same guy, same service - he's even directly insulting magazine editors now!

  10. Re:Will someone produce a cable card rival to TIVO on Boxee 1.5 Will Be the Last Supported Desktop Version · · Score: 1

    Dozens.

  11. Re:Google and Mozilla on Google and Mozilla: Partners, Not Competitors · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gaaaah! Yes, but your counter-critism is even more flawed.
    Do you think that $100/$300m is a goodwill gift? No!
    The key points are:
    a) Mozilla are not a search company.
    b) Google make the vast proportion of their profit from search.
    c) This contract brings in very significant additional revenue to Google.
    d) It keeps that very significant market share away from it's competitor(s).

    So no matter how much people think Google want a browser war, they'd over the moon if Firefox gained 100% market share - because their search revenue is what this is all about.

    The bottom line is that apart from the engineering advancements in browser technology (which is a key enabling factor to grow revenue in the other Google products) as long as firefox+chrome has a greater market share than chrome or firefox alone, Google really don't care if the userbase split is 50:50 or 1:100.

    Remember MS didn't, and don't make IE because it's a nice idea - they quickly realised that the OS and the Apps (99% of there revenue at the time) were not important in a Web 1.0 world, and so they needed to control that space urgently and entirely, which at one point was very successful. They then moved into locking business into web-enabled technologies (e.g. Sharepoint) to hinder large migrations to Apple (or HP/Dell on linux) plus web solutions.
    IMO, MS is basically held up by it's marketing and stong sales channels at the moment - if these sales channels all started shipping with Linux (+Office etc.) it could all come down like a big house of cards. That's a big 'if' - but that's also a very big fall.

  12. Re:Security on Sorry, IT: These 5 Technologies Belong To Users · · Score: 1

    Thin client. Keep the data far away from users, and secure.

  13. Re:So all 5 of you running Safari on Windows on New Remote Flaw In 64-Bit Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    Nope - everyone running Win7/64 bit watch out - because if you can trigger it with Safari, you can trigger it with other mechisms, and rather than crash, get total access to the kernel - e.g. be able to write raw sectors, access other hardware and basically bypass all security.

    The point is that if dropped into a advert pushed out into lots of ad syndicates, it could bypass all antivirus, DEP and other security to infect millions of machines in minutes. Once running in the kernel, it can unhook antivirus, and basically make a rebuild necessary to get the machine back - no amount of hitting 'update' will help.

  14. Re:Headline.. Flaw in APPLE Safari for windows fou on New Remote Flaw In 64-Bit Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    Wrong - it's a MS bug in windows, it's just that they triggered it through Safari. A bit like saving saving a file in safari causing the machine to explode - not really Safari's fault.

  15. Re:Prior art on Apple Patents Using Apps During Calls · · Score: 0

    What's Prior Art ? Didn't you hear it's first to file now?
    So it's either be eaten by Apple, or IBM (who probably patented every concievable angle)

  16. Re:And? on Microsoft Can Remotely Kill Purchased Apps · · Score: 1

    Apple can't - if they delete an app from the store, it's still on your phone, with you data.

    MS can remtoe wipe your apps, just like the 'where did my copy of the book 1984 go?' Amazon event.

  17. Re:Encryption on Two-Thirds of Lost USB Drives Carry Malware · · Score: 1

    errrrrrrrr, that's a pretty unusal use - only data that's 'public' on a USB stick.

    Truecrypt is easy soloution, and is small enough to fit on the stick - problem solved.

  18. Re:Ice Age Park on Russian Scientists Say They'll Clone a Mammoth Within 5 Years · · Score: 2

    Behaviour. The genome is are the 'building blocks' of the creature, and like building blocks, they don't tell you in isolation how warm the building is, if the building is noisy or quiet, or if the building lives happily with sabre-tooth tigers....

    It's a totally new kind of nature vs nurture experiment, and a step beyond 'Dolly'.
    Dolly and her twin both grew up with other sheep, went 'baa' and ate grass - but will this mammoth behave like a elephant if kept with elephants? What if it's not influenced by other animals including humans ?

    Ligers are a good example of how a creature's DNA influences it's behaviour more than 'learned' social aspects.
    Liger keepers say they are 'confused' and never 'fit in' with Tigers (even when mating is an option) or Lions (as part of a normal pride)

  19. Re:So why is my lower tier so expensive? on Verizon Speeds Up FiOS To 150Mbps · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because speeds don't scale like you think they do. If you have lots of little pipes going into a fat one, you can manage contingency and plan easily. If the little pipes are 10x the size, it's harder - especially as the actual point where service is impacted (around 80%) can go from 'ok for next 6 months' to 'upgrade now' due to a single customer changing usage profile.

    It's like the difference between driving trucks, and driving cars - yeah, they are 3 times the length, but they cause 10x the traffic slowdown.

    Service providers work of graphs that measure peaks (and 95%s), and if a single customer can move the peak from 85% full to 100% full, then it's hard to plan a good service - the only way is to have more contingency, which means more equipment/fibre/lambdas.

  20. Re:It's either full body scanning on EPIC Files Lawsuit To Suspend Airport Body Scanner Use · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I haven't had them reach more than 6 inches above my knees."

    Well, that might be fine for you, but I'm still outta luck. :-)

  21. Re:Maybe currentcost on Real-Time Power Monitoring Options? · · Score: 1

    Totally love the Current Cost devices - HackADay had an article on how to interface a ~£10 device (from e-bay) with Google Powermeter.
    - which works perfectly!
    (I've moved to rrdtool, as I want 6-second resolution, and GPM only does 10-minute, but I'm still tweaking)

    They are the easiest thing in the world to integrate, cat /dev/ttyUSB0 and you get a little XML showing temp and the power of the 3 sensor inputs every 6 seconds !

    Current Cost support is fantastic too - got a reply to two techie questions in less than 24 hours.

    E-On give these to Their UK customers - but there is a big backorder delay for free ones.

  22. Gaaaa SaveFace worsened my settings !!!! on Open Source Utilities For Facebook Privacy · · Score: 1

    I had a load of 'only friends, except.....' and it reset them to 'only friends' !!!

    *without asking* and only briefly saving 'resetting settings' ! :-(

  23. I told you this already but..... on Maybe the Aliens Are Addicted To Computer Games · · Score: 1

    This already happened back in 2306. Were all just on a loop-tape.

    Dom

  24. Re:Yeah... on How To Avoid a Botnet Infection? · · Score: 1

    Pah! Old uni lab rat mate Hammy was hacking MBOX privs back in the 1992 and DEC refused to acknowledge the problems or produce a fix.

  25. Re:Wow, way to abbreviate there on Anonymous Network I2P 0.7.2 Released · · Score: 1

    Duuuur.

    I2P is obviously short for IIP, and is therefore I-squared-P. As the 2 would be superscripted, that's 50 smaller than a full I, as well as using a character that's much earlier in the ASCII table - presumably to save power and reduce the related carbon footprint.

    Bysides I-I-Peee sounds like the authors are jabbering incontinents, never the best first impression.