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Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 1) 34

by Arker (#47449693) Attached to: 1k words
"That's not a good thing. You're telling me there's a whole bunch of people who share similar consistent values, and have worked for decades (if not longer, the values of LP existed before the official party existed) promoting those values, and yet still have consistently failed to stop the growing government, who is apparently much less coherent or capable of satisfying its members"

The government has the advantage of being able to take money out of our pocket, and spend it against us, more or less at-will.

And we could go on for ages about all the other ways the Duopoly party is entrenched and what a massive disadvantage we started at - and anyone who wants any sort of change in this country starts at.

All considered, I would say we have actually done very well. Don't forget we won several Republican primaries last time and were only defeated with the most shameless series of dirty tricks seen at a national convention since '68, if not before.

Yes, it's bad news that we havent won yet, and arent likely to win immediately, but the good news is that momentum is on our side now, and so are the majority of the american people, on several of our most important issues.

The cup may be half empty but that means it's half full. A few decades ago that was nowhere near true.

Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 0) 34

by Arker (#47448441) Attached to: 1k words
"there is an argument to be made that there really is no libertarian party in this country - or at least, none that can possibly encompass the values of all the people who call themselves libertarians."

To a degree that is true, but less so of the LP than any other parties we can compare it to. The LP platform has remained remarkably consistent for decades, and there is little in any incarnation of it that many libertarians would have more than minor quibbles with.

"His platform, beyond any shadow of a doubt, embraces the values that I outlined above."

You are, beyond any shadow of a doubt, wrong. It's not a near miss, you are not even on the same planet.

Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 1) 34

by Arker (#47447409) Attached to: 1k words
"The libertarian party wants to give more power to the people with the most money, which just reinforces this problem."

That's simply not true. It's a leftie-progressive-whatever-you-call-it-this-week bullshit propaganda line and always has been.

Libertarians want to first remove power from interpersonal dealings insofar as possible, and only secondarily devolve whatever power cannot be removed entirely and spread it out as evenly as possible rather than letting it centralize and metastasize into a capitol and imperial beaureacracy.

Comment The good news? (Score 0) 131

by Arker (#47443341) Attached to: Chinese Couple Sells Children To Support Online Game Addiction
It sounds like these two will soon be executed. Without being in favor of the death penalty it sounds like it may well have a silver lining in this case. If the facts are as presented, at least, it's probably a very good thing they wont be reproducing again.

Still, surgical sterilization would do the job as well, and unlike the death penalty, it is at least possible it could be reversed, should it eventually come out that the two were somehow framed and not really guilty.

Comment Kudos to Dennis Fisher (Score 0) 75

by Arker (#47440961) Attached to: Source Code Leaked For Tinba Banking Trojan
For writing an article about IT-criminals in which he refers to them as IT-criminals.

Even if it does appear on a page with a prominent link to another article which misuses the term 'hackers' in its very title. I am sure that was beyond his personal control.

Also it sounds like some really good programming! 20kb compiled, and full functional. From <a href="https://www.csis.dk/en/csis/news/4303/">this report</a> it appears that it's written in assembler. Does anyone have a link to the actual code?

Comment Re:Needs functionality (Score 2) 381

by Arker (#47440677) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: Do You Want a Smart Watch?
"I guess if you didn't turn it on, and I'm calling BS."

I had a laptop of that era that lasted me days between charges at times, and the battery on it was old, I could easily see it going weeks with light use and a fresh battery.

It had a low power monochrome display, and was mostly solid state. The only moving disk was the 3.5" floppy, the OS was built in on ROM, it had 2mb RAM so there was plenty for ramdisk. The only thing that really hit the battery at all was the floppy, and with the ramdisk that didnt need to be hit very often.

Just because it isnt part of your experience does not mean it didnt exist.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 0) 30

by Arker (#47436585) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive
Sure.

Which is why I do not in any way defer to their judgements, but make my own.

"To draw truths from reading for yourself."

Drawing truths from the book with the longest continuous editorial history known to man, one that warns you it has been tampered with by scribes with lying pens (Jeremiah 8:8) is not an easy thing, it is a puzzle. But our creator gave us rational minds to solve puzzles with.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 1) 30

by Arker (#47434269) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive
No, I am sorry but you are wrong. They were certainly not part of the original Bible. They were *added* to some Greek translations of the Scripture, somewhere around 100bc, but no one considered them Canonical until centuries later. We are talking the 4th century AD on the "Christian" side and perhaps a couple of centuries earlier on the Rabbinate side, but in each case it was a multi-generational project to ultimately *add* these books, to elevate the works of men to the status of scripture.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 1) 30

by Arker (#47431411) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive

That may be a matter of opinion and perspective as well.

Those are late compositions in Greek and clearly not part of the original Hebrew Bible (properly called the Tanakh.)

The books you mention, along with the so-called New Testament books, both those declared 'canonical' by the Imperial Roman authorities and the other books that were banned instead, along with the Talmud, are all in my mind defensible and even in cases valuable, as Midrash, as Commentary, as a record of what men at the time thought on some important subjects - but NOT as scripture to be elevated to stand with the Tanakh, let alone to actually be set ON TOP of the Bible proper as so many do.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 0) 30

by Arker (#47430995) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive
"What was the last time there was a retraction of inaccurate or harmful material from the Bible?"

It's actually a good question if refined a bit.

I would propose to you that what you see as 'inaccurate or harmful material from the Bible' is better defined as 'inaccurate or harmful interpretations of the Bible' and while retractions of those are not unheard of, they are certainly relatively rare.

I think the deeper point here is simply that the theoretical bright-line between science and religion has a worrying tendency to evaporate in practice, and simply pointing out that tel-evangelists are even worse is not much of a defense.

There's a huge difference between appreciating the scientific method and having faith in whatever the 'scientist' says - in fact they are mutually incompatible.

Comment Re:To what end? (Score 1) 219

by Arker (#47427281) Attached to: After NSA Spying Flap, Germany Asks CIA Station Chief to Depart
"My impression, also from German newspapers etc., is that most germans including politicians are truely mad and are seriously considering to cool down relations with the USA."

As they should be, frankly the reaction seems inexplicably mild.

Can you imagine the reaction if the shoe was on the other foot? If this was a BD spy caught infiltrating the CIA?

A 'cool down' in relations would be a serious understatement.

Comment Re: haven't we learned from the last 25 exploits? (Score 1) 68

by Arker (#47426261) Attached to: 'Rosetta Flash' Attack Leverages JSONP Callbacks To Steal Credentials
"Over the years, I've done a lot of work with games and simulations for training."

OK. That really doesnt have anything to do with the web, however. Sure, the web can be used to deliver the project - that doesnt mean it has to actually run inside the browser. There is a HUGE difference.

"We could not have produced this educational game with just HTML."

I get where you are coming from but I still think it's far off the mark. The web is not a game platform, that is not it's purpose, so 'we could not do games this way' is not a very telling criticism.

You can use better tools to make the games, and use the web merely to deliver the game. Where is the problem with that?

It would NOT be slower, clunkier, or more prone to error. It could be done using exactly the same technologies in virtually exactly the same way - the only difference would be very slightly less easy to get it started, and in return for that, your browser is no longer a malware vector.

Or, it could be done using technologies better suited for the purpose, in which case I would expect the results to be less clunky, faster, and more stable - but the development process would be more expensive as well.

I get why you would want to use RAD to lower costs, just not why you see the tiny convenience of running in the browser automatically as worth the cost of turning the web into a malware distribution network.

Comment Re:haven't we learned from the last 25 exploits? (Score 0) 68

by Arker (#47420705) Attached to: 'Rosetta Flash' Attack Leverages JSONP Callbacks To Steal Credentials
"An HTML-only web is great for relatively static content, but not so great for anything much beyond that. "

This sounds like nonsense to me, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you for *concrete* examples of what you are talking about. I have yet to be cited a single good example here - very often what is being done would work just fine in HTML, with less overhead, but the 'designers' just do not understand HTML, or have any desire to learn it, so they do things this way instead.

Certainly javascript can produce a slicker appearance and make certain things a bit smoother - but to do so it sacrifices device-independence and browser agnosticism - critical advantages that underlie the success of the web and whose loss can only undermine it.

Now if you build a proper web page, and then *enhance* it with javascript sanely, preserving graceful fallbacks, that would be fine. You can have your slick interface without sacrificing the web. And I can choose to avoid your slick interface so as not to sacrifice my security.

The 'designers' that cant be bothered to do that, and the suits that keep them employed, are the reason we cant have nice things. In this case, javascript.

"Is it so difficult to grok why you might want content to change on the client?"

Not difficult to understand why it was desired.

The point is it's harmful and been proven harmful, and far too harmful for the small advantages it brings to outweigh that.

Comment Re:haven't we learned from the last 25 exploits? (Score 1) 68

by Arker (#47414205) Attached to: 'Rosetta Flash' Attack Leverages JSONP Callbacks To Steal Credentials
"If you want the web to be useful, you should be pushing for only the most minimal use of Javascript."

When this crap first started getting pushed, a lot of us saw the potential problems coming and objected. We were assured it was only to be used to 'spice up' webpages, not to replace them.

Such assurances are obviously shit. If it's allowed to use it, then the lowest common denominator of self-proclaimed 'designers' can, will, and must overuse it. This overuse expands steadily and predictably until and unless there is effective pushback. Today we have reached the point where the typical corporate 'website' (and I use scare quotes because these things are NOT websites, at all) consists of hundreds of executable files, fetched from dozens of different servers, all of which the browser is expected to suck in and execute without so much as giving you a warning.

And contrary to the hilarious suggestion I see at the top of many many webpages today ("Enable Javascript for a better user experience") this does not bring with it any substantial improvements for the user. Quite the contrary, it results in a worse immediate experience (no, I didnt want a dozen popups, autoplaying video presentations, and a huge advertisement that floats over the text so I cannot see it!) and also in the longer term (like a week later when you discover that some random ad server sent your browser a rootkit and it happily executed it, oops!.)

But the point is history has proven this is a bad code drives out good situation. If it's allowed, it will take over, just like a weed.

Turn off javascript. See the web as it really is. And support the web that still exists, before it's too late.

Comment Re:say wha? (Score 4, Insightful) 68

by Arker (#47412415) Attached to: 'Rosetta Flash' Attack Leverages JSONP Callbacks To Steal Credentials
"English translation: as usual, Flash is useless except as a vector for malware, viruses, trojans and keyloggers. Remove Flash from your system."

That's actually not quite true. Flash is a great way to develop simple games quickly and cheaply.

The problem isnt Flash itself (which is on the whole a fine product, used correctly) but the idea of using Flash as a substitute for a webpage, the installation of it as a browser plugin, and the auto-execution of it by the browser. None of that should be tolerated.

It's still possible to get a standalone flash interpreter and only feed it local, vetted files, which is really fine (or as close to fine as lots of other things you do every day, at least.)  But Adobe seems to be trying their best to discourage that and force everyone to use it as an auto-enabled browser component instead. The one way to use the program that causes major problems is also the one way they want you to use it.

Everyone who has been infected as a result of this should really get together and sue these arseholes, because money is the only language they understand.

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