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User: bill_mcgonigle

bill_mcgonigle's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 18,097

  1. Job Description: psychopath on Anonymous Retaliates, Leaks Texas Police Emails · · Score: 1

    If the ones they have celebrate when they shoot someone dead, and believe all minorities are criminal, they'd be better off with nobody at all; if that's all they can do. Otherwise, they'll have to pay more until they attract someone more appropriate.

    It's hard to be moral, intelligent, and a Law Enforcement Officer. A Peace Officer, sure, that jives with the Natural Law, but to find people who will arrest and shoot people as needed for selling milk to each other or building guitars - well, that takes a special kind of psychopath.

    So, now we've defined a job that only psychopaths will take and then we're shocked when they act like psychopaths. If we want this to change, we need to repeal thousands of unjust laws, and quickly.

  2. PGP/GPG on WikiLeaks Publishes Cable Archive In Full · · Score: 1

    Anyone who knows shit about dealing with information knows that journalists are extremely tech unsavy and not giving them their own archive and hand holding when it comes to passwords, crypto, etc.

    GPG/PGP aren't hard to use. If that was going to stymie a journalist from participating, then good, they weren't smart enough to be in this particular club. After all, if they're that dumb they might just go and publish their own password... oh, wait.

    P.S. - 'time limited password' on a static file? Either Assange is an idiot or the journalist is just making stuff up to try to cover his ass. I don't suspect the former.

  3. What about the robot hand? on Drunkeness and Sexual Harassment Alleged At Microsoft UK · · Score: 1

    No mention of him having his hand removed and replaced with a robotic one?

  4. Re:Phew! on Chemical Cocktail Turns Mice Clear · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mice aren't dumb enough to fall for that.

  5. Re:Wait a second... on Hackers May Have Nabbed Over 200 SSL Certificates · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...wouldn't the certs be useless without the associated private keys?

    No, the government of Iran generated a key and a CSR for *.google.com, had Diginotard sign them (not sure if this was social or technical hack) and then deployed them inline for a MitM attack on the residents of the area their organization controls.

    They have the key and the cert. They didn't get Google's key or cert, they have their own.

    I wonder how many dissidents have died because of this sloppy CA and the reliance on the CA system.

  6. he's talking about tarballs on Kernel.org Compromised · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The files are in a git repository. That's what matters, not what you wrap around it to provide for requests.

    So http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.0.4.tar.bz2 gets pulled dynamically from git?

    the kernel developers Who Matter

    Are you saying users don't?

  7. Re:Flamebait ahead on Russia Close To Findings On Soyuz and Proton · · Score: 1

    Having lost a couple of rockets the Russians can now say they need billions to redesign components before the next Soyuz launch and NASA either pay up or leave ISS empty.

    Ooooohh. And the lost ship was just carrying food and fuel. Got it.

  8. Huge PR Upside on Russia Close To Findings On Soyuz and Proton · · Score: 1

    There would be no upside

    Dear ISS consortium,

    We have boarded the ISS with five Chinese astronauts. We weren't afraid to launch, and we'll take care of the station for you until you are able to return to space. We'll be happy to cooperate with you on station logistics if you wish.

    Sincerely,
    PRC

    and it would create a great uproar.

    Oh, hell yes.

  9. Salvage Rights in Orbit? on Russia Close To Findings On Soyuz and Proton · · Score: 1

    say, by claiming the thing as their own?

    What are salvage rights in orbit? Space X could probably get people up there in an impressive amount of time if they were so motivated.

  10. Re:And the rest? on Pakistan Bans Encryption · · Score: 1

    But then what were they waiting for, and why alert the other terrorists?

    I dunno, a presidential campaign to kick off? It's all idle speculation anyway - the American People have seen absolutely no evidence that the body dumped into the Indian Ocean was UBL anyway.

  11. Re:And the rest? on Pakistan Bans Encryption · · Score: 1

    So it's fair to assume at least somebody in Pakistan's government knew he was there

    And it's not unreasonable to assume that they were keeping him for 'us'.

  12. US almost had this on Pakistan Bans Encryption · · Score: 1

    What about digital signatures?

    Let's not forget we went through this with the Clinton administration just 15 years ago. If I could get the Slashdot search to cooperate I'd include a link here to Rivest's winnowing-and-chaffing algorithm that passes secure messages where encryption is banned but digital signatures are allowed.

  13. Re:Pakistan is NOT benning encryption on Pakistan Bans Encryption · · Score: 2

    IAANE (I am a network engineer) and I have had to deploy a government spying^Hlegal intercept platform before, and this is pretty much just bog standard like many other countries do.

    Were you in the military? That's the only reasonable definition of 'had to' that I can come up with (vs. helping governments infringe on civil liberties for profit).

  14. Eugenicists were Socialists on Measles Resurgent Due To Fear of Vaccination · · Score: 1

    Just another eugenicist. They were the Libertarians of yesteryear, selfish and wicked.

    The eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th century were proud socialists. This is a matter of historical fact that can't be revised to suit your personal political agenda.

  15. Re:What market does this target? on New USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage · · Score: 1

    Also if you can tell the difference between flac and high ripped mp3s on headphones without listening to them back to back I will eat my headphones.

    What flavor do you prefer, or are you just gonna chicken out with earbuds?

    We'll use In a Silent Way by Miles Davis, original 1969 LP mastering. I'll just need a minute of samples, but I'll accept 15 seconds if the section is heavy with cymbals.

  16. Re:What market does this target? on New USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage · · Score: 1

    What's this, a bit of imagination instead of knee-jerk "this is shit" talk? You must not be new here.

  17. Re:Hard-coded CRL? on Another CA Issues False Certificates To Iran · · Score: 1

    Argh.

    - Nonetheless, there should be code changes required for this sort of problem.
    + Nonetheless, there shouldn't be code changes required for this sort of problem.

  18. Hard-coded CRL? on Another CA Issues False Certificates To Iran · · Score: 1

    Why hasn't mozilla or someone else made a simple addon for maintaining/importing CA CRL lists

    CRL's are being supplanted by OCSP <WP:Online_Certificate_Status_Protocol>.

    The patchset has details, but, I don't get why Mozilla's OCSP service isn't sufficient here. Mundanes aren't allowed to view this bug:

    // Bug 682927: Do not trust any DigiNotar-issued certificates.
    // We do this check after normal certificate validation because we do not
    // want to override a "revoked" OCSP response.

    Here they're hard-coding a CN check:

    if (strstr(node->cert->issuerName, "CN=DigiNotar")) {
        isDigiNotarIssuedCert = PR_TRUE;
    // Do not let the user override the error if the cert was
    // chained from the "DigiNotar Root CA" cert and the cert was issued
    // within the time window in which we think the mis-issuance(s) occurred.
        if (strstr(node->cert->issuerName, "CN=DigiNotar Root CA")) {
          PRTime cutoff = 0, notBefore = 0, notAfter = 0;
          PRStatus status = PR_ParseTimeString("01-JUL-2011 00:00", PR_TRUE, &cutoff);
          NS_ASSERTION(status == PR_SUCCESS, "PR_ParseTimeString failed");
          if (status != PR_SUCCESS ||
              CERT_GetCertTimes(serverCert, &notBefore, &notAfter) != SECSuccess ||
              notBefore >= cutoff) {
            return SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE;
          }
        }
      }

    And, this is quite interesting:

    // By request of the Dutch government
      if (!strcmp(node->cert->issuerName,
                  "CN=Staat der Nederlanden Root CA,O=Staat der Nederlanden,C=NL") &&
          CERT_LIST_END(CERT_LIST_NEXT(node), serverCertChain)) {
        return 0;
      }
      }

    I wonder what the Dutch government knows - it would imply more than a 1-off problem since the chain should provide a level of isolation.

    Nonetheless, there should be code changes required for this sort of problem. Maybe Mozilla doesn't have an OCSP responder running for its roots certs yet?

  19. Re:News is spam (maybe) on New USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage · · Score: 1

    In short, with tomorrow's technology (what Micron is still developing), you will need a 6" long stick, covered with ICs on both sides. This will not be an inexpensive device for at least a few years.

    This doesn't make sense. I can buy a 64GB MicroSD today. The memory part of the chips is half the actual form factor. 32 of those could fit inside an average USB flash drive pretty easily, plus an IC to arbitrate.

  20. Re:Old news for the rest of us on Windows 8 To Natively Support ISO and VHD Mounting · · Score: 1

    Ask a linux user to burn an iso and it's done in one line. 'cdrecord redbook.iso' Done.

    If it's DVDs it's slightly different 'growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdrw=dvd.iso'.

    The first is easy. The second should be handled by a hardlink and $0. But, k3b works too.

  21. Pictures of Vermont Destruction on When Did Irene Stop Being a Hurricane? · · Score: 1

    nothing more interesting than a few downed trees and some localized flooding

    Your choice of media apparently isn't covering central Vermont and New Hampshire.

    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vermont-Flooding-2011/212455332141871?sk=photos

    A bridge got taken out two towns over where the brook-like river rose over 30 feet. In a spring flood it might rise 5 feet.

    Meteorologists might call it a hurricane or tropical storm based on an arbitrary delineation, but a Richter-like scale of effects would probably a better classification system.

  22. Re:How is this on The Copyright Nightmare of 'I Have a Dream' · · Score: 1

    TFS, even. It seems King took some tactical lessons from Gandhi but didn't really learn the moral lessons of satyagraha.

  23. Re:How is this on The Copyright Nightmare of 'I Have a Dream' · · Score: 1

    It is time to put an end to century laws and go back to a sensible two generation intellectual property right ownership (38 years).

    Even if you can achieve this, it'd just get extended again in the future. At what point will the People stop trying to kick Lucy's football?

  24. Re:What is UNCO? on Updated: Mozilla Community Contributor Departs Over Bug Handling · · Score: 1

    :guffaw:

  25. Re:The Supreme Court Corporate Five on Mass. Court Says Constitution Protects Filming On-Duty Police · · Score: 1

    To them the constitution only applies to corporations.

    Despite a pretty bad track record, such a broad brush doesn't help advance anything. Heller and McDonald are two that come to mind that dealt specifically with an issue of individual rights.