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User: badfish99

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  1. Re:It didn't matter whether it was last year or ne on ARIN Is Down To the Last /8 of IPv4 Addresses · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now that addresses have run out, they have become a valuable resource for the ISPs that own them. If those ISPs implement IPv6 then there will be no shortage of addresses, and they will lose all their value.

    So the monopolist ISPs will now do everything in their power to prevent IPv6 from being adopted.

  2. Re:Smart move, on Microsoft Ships Surface Pro 2 Tablets With Wrong, Slower Processor · · Score: 1

    Oh yes, another Microsoft shill who is trying to tell us that they've got 1000 customers for this thing. We're not fooled.

  3. Re:ISPs taking IPs back from customers on Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis? · · Score: 1

    ... extra fee for a static IP address

    Which is why they don't want to give you IPV6. Given a choice between an artificial scarcity of IP addresses that allows them to change extra, and an investment in a solution that will eventually make the scarcity go away, it's fairly obvious which the ISPs are going to choose.

  4. Re:Not an issue ... on Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire Blocked In the UK · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Few have even heard about these services.

    After demonoid ended I couldn't find any good torrent sites. But now my government publishes a list of the best sites every month. I'm really grateful to them for calling my attention to them.

  5. Re:Well, it's something. on Google and Microsoft To Block Child-Abuse Search Terms · · Score: 1

    I don't imagine it will do anything about child abuse, but if I wanted to look for pictures of it all day long, there are now 200 more jobs that have been created, where I can do so without fear or being caught.

  6. Re:no different elsewhere on The Legal Purgatory at the US Border: Detained, Searched, and Interrogated · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the people commenting on the US border situation are Europeans, who are used to crossing the borders between the various European countries, where nothing like this happens.

    Indeed, I remember travelling through the "Iron Curtain" in my youth with no thought that anything like this might occur to me.

  7. Re:Good! on UK Government Destroys Guardian's Snowden Drives · · Score: 5, Informative
    Indeed, it may draw attention to the fact that there is NO safeguard built into the statute: which states

    An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b) [i.e. is a terrorist]

  8. Re:Sensationalist bullshit title. on Chinese Firm Huawei In Control of UK Net Filters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The filtering allegedly works by checking every URL that you visit for porn (I've no idea how); if porn is found, not only are you blocked from seeing the URL, but it is also added to a blacklist.

    The point of the article is that this checking is being done for everyone, even if they don't want filtering. So the ISP is, in effect, compiling a list of the URLs visited by their customers who do not want to be filtered.

    And that list is being compiled on hardware that is alleged to be under the control of a foreign, potentially hostile, government.

  9. Re:So... on Austrian Blank Media Tax May Expand To Include Cloud Storage · · Score: 1

    So, if all the money goes to the BREIN organisation, who actually gets it?
    Do they share it out amongst their employees (secretaries, cleaners,...), or does one person in charge get very very rich?

  10. Re:Too far north. on Kazakhstan Wants Russia To Hand Over Their Baikonur Space City · · Score: 1

    Still, at 63 degrees north in Siberia they won't have so much trouble keeping the liquid oxygen in the fuel tanks cold.

    Finding people who want to work there might be a problem, though. Although, on second thoughts, it might be a better job than working in the salt mines.

  11. Why is this hi-tech? on UK To Use "Risk-Profiling Software" To Screen All Airline Passengers and Cargo · · Score: 2

    Given the number of bad things that happen on airlines, the software could just assign a risk of "zero" to everything. This would be just as accurate as any other way of finding a non-existent needle in a haystack.

  12. Re:Daily Mail fail on The Text Message Typo That Landed a Man In Jail · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IANAL, but: intent may be irrelevant in this case. The current fashion is to make so-called "strict liability" laws, especially in the area of "child protection". For example, in the UK, if there are child-porn pictures on your computer, then you are guily of an offence, regardless of how they got there. I don't know, but the same may apply in this case.

    The beauty of this is that it allows the police to arrest people like this unfortunate person and put them in jail without all the tedious arguments about whether they intended do harm or whether it was an accident. A jury will be told "if he sent the message then he is guilty, even if it was a mistake".

    Indeed, it is even possible for a policeman to force someone to do something against their will, and then arrest them for it. Google the case of "Winzar (1983)" if you don't believe me.

  13. Re:Who cares on UK Government Owns 16.9 Million Unused IPv4 Addresses · · Score: 1

    To apply the fix, everyone involved must cooperate and spend a lot of money upgrading.

    The alternative is to carry without ipv6: this will create an artificial scarcity of ipv4 addresses. They will become more and more valuable, so existing businesses will be able to make more and more money renting them out: as no more are available, nobody else will be able to join the cartel to get a slice of the pie.

    So: the choice is: spend a lot of money on ipv6 now to help the customer, or screw the customer over and head towards a cartel-dominated future. Surely ipv6 is doomed.

  14. Re:Dunning doesn't have a Nobel Prize on Baskerville Is the Greatest Font, Statistically, Says Filmmaker Errol Morris · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm really fond of the Dunning-Kruger effect to the point where I mention it almost daily

    So: would you say that you have an expert level of skill and knowledge on this particular topic?

  15. Re:Empower the poor! on Indian Government Mulls Giving Away Mobile Phones To the Poor · · Score: 1

    It's important for politicians to ensure that voters in poor countries to have mobile phones. Their use has revolutionized democratic elections in many countries.

    Before, when a politician bought your vote, you had no way to prove how you actually voted. So the politicians had to trust the people to vote the way they were told.

    Now, when the politician visits your village, you just show him the picture you took of your voting paper on your mobile phone in order to collect your bribe.

  16. Re:No cashier needed on Starbucks Partners With Square · · Score: 2

    Why bother with customers at all? Just track the people walking past the store, charge each of them $5, and leave the country with a big bag of cash before the police can catch up with you.

    Credit card transactions with no audit trail: what could possibly go wrong?

  17. Re:Microchannel Anyone? on Red Hat Clarifies Doubts Over UEFI Secure Boot Solution · · Score: 2

    I remember a salesman from IBM coming to show us one of the early Microchannel machines.

    He proudly told us about its wonderful security feature: if you changed any hardware, you could not boot it unless you had a magic floppy disk containing some magic security files.

    Then he switched it on to demonstrate it. It was as dead as a dodo. He then remembered that he had removed a network card just before bringing it to us. And he had forgotten to bring the magic floppy with him.

    Exit one very red-faced salesman. And we vowed never to buy any of that crap.

  18. Re:So where's the security? on Red Hat Clarifies Doubts Over UEFI Secure Boot Solution · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So I'm a philanthropically-minded linux user with $99 to spare. I give that money to Microsoft, and they give me some magic key that lets me write linux kernels that will run on anyone's machine. I immediately publish that key on my website, for anyone to use. Now any criminal can use this key to run their malware on any machine.

    Obviously it doesn't work like this, or the whole scheme would be useless. So how is it going to work?

    I read TFA, and as far as I can tell, it *does* work like that: for $99, I get my key sent to the hardware vendors to be put into their UEFI boot chips. So will everyone get a free "bios upgrade" when I deliberately leak my key?

  19. Re:NASA property how? on Jeff Bezos To Retrieve Apollo 11 Rocket Engines · · Score: 1

    So the salvor can claim a reward from NASA; presumably NASA would refuse to pay. Would not a court then grant ownership of the engines to the salvor in lieu of the reward? If not, how would any salvor ever hope to receive the reward to which he is entitled?

  20. Re:So what did he post? on UK Man Jailed For 'Offensive Tweets' · · Score: 1

    All of us who know what he said live in the UK, and we are all in fear of being put in prison if we tell you.

  21. Re:Makes sense. on Microsoft Blocking Pirate Bay Links In Messenger · · Score: 1

    So: Microsoft censoring TPB is bad, but TPB censoring ads would be good?

  22. Re:Facebook too on Microsoft Blocking Pirate Bay Links In Messenger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft and Facebook can do what they want - people can't complain too much, they are the company's networks after all, they can do what they want.

    Would people have the same attitude as you if the phone company started beeping out words that they objected to? Or if the postal service started throwing away mail because they objected to the recipient? After all, the phone and the postal network belong to those companies, so they should be able to do whatever thay want?

  23. It's a con trick on Secret BBC Documents Reveal Flimsy Case For DRM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a con trick by the BBC.

    No-one wants DRM on the BBC's broadcasts; not even the BBC themselves. But many content providers, especially American ones, are trying to insist on it. So the BBC have devised a very clever way to con the content providers.

    The trick is to put DRM into the broadcast version of the program guide, that tells you what is on when. This was announced with great fanfare as "the BBC is adding DRM to its broadcasts", with no mention of the small technical detail that the actual video and audio will have no DRM. So the content providers think that they have got their way, but there will be no impediment at all to (for example) capturing a broadcast off the air and making a torrent out of it. Articles like TFA are part of the con: they help convince the content providers that they have got what they want, which in turn induces them to sell stuff to the BBC that we might otherwise not see.

    The commercial set-top-box manufacturers don't care, because they have to cater for genuine DRM on the commercial channels anyway. And the hobbyists who are running software such as MythTV don't care, because they download the program guide from the BBC website, which conveniently provides it in machine-readable form with no DRM.

  24. Re:Holy Shit! on Obama Admin Wants Hackers Charged As Mobsters · · Score: 1

    Of course industry will argue that: they don't want to do anything, so they want a law that will allow them to do nothing.

    From the point of view of the public, the ideal response from industry would be to take every possible measure to prevent a break-in, but to be open and honest when one occurs, rather than hiding it. The economic incentive to behave like this would be to punish companies that admit they have had a break-in (so that they take steps in advance to prevent it), but to hang the CEO of any company found to have covered up a break-in.

  25. Re:This makes it worse! on Diginotar Responds To Rogue Certificate Problem · · Score: 1

    Or better still: revoke their entire CA, and *don't* start a new one.