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Comment Re:Standards (Score 1) 29

"The prescribed global standard doesn't work so we're just going to roll our own. Twice."
Great. Thanks for that. Not "we will penalise sites that don't allow OSCP pinning because we think it's necessary" but "bugger this, we'll apply our own definition of what can be trusted or not to every user"

The reason for using this alternative to the alternative is because any kind of blacklist-based security doesn't work. It rates #2 in the six dumbest ideas in computer security, with default-allow (which arguably is the problem that blacklists are trying to deal with) at #1. First there were CRLs, which don't work. They were replaced with OCSP, which doesn't work. Now we have cert blacklists, which are fairly recent so they haven't failed often enough for it to be obvious to everyone that they don't work, but give it time...

Once they fail, the browser vendors will come back with version 4 of the dumbest idea, then version 5, and then version 6, and they'll just keep on doing the wrong thing over and over and over until eventually it starts working, dammit!

Comment Re:stop the pseudo-scientific bullshit (Score 1) 88

In any case the Russians have the explanation. From TFA:

For example, you all remember the magnificent shots of the Yamal crater in winter, made during the latest expedition in Novomber 2014. But do you know that Vladimir Putin, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, was the first man in the world who went down the crater of gas emission riding on a bear? More than this, it was very risky, because no one could guarantee there would not be Ukrainian Kike-Banderites hiding down there.'

Comment Re:UL (Underwriters) is a private, for-profit comp (Score 1) 114

There are already programs in place. One example, NIST certifies private security testing laboratories to test according to FIPS standards. It just nobody asking for certified products outside of the government procurement.

FIPS 140 certification, which I assume is what you're referring to, is almost worthless in terms of determining how resistant to real-world attack a product really is. It would have done nothing to prevent the problem discussed here. Its main use is as a measure of how desperate a vendor is to get government contracts, which is also why no-one asks for it outside government procurement.

Comment Re:IE once again kills innovation (Score 1) 171

Webservers are going to have to support both for years.

Applications are going to have to support both for years, possibly eternity. The whole HTTP 2.0 process was driven mostly by Google, who wanted HTTP changed to reduce the load on their servers (heaven knows what sort of uproar would have resulted if Microsoft had tried this sort of thing). Unfortunately the resulting design, while it may make Google's job easier, is incredibly difficult to implement for things like embedded devices. The HTTP 2.0 WG's response when this was pointed out, repeatedly, was "let them eat HTTP 1.1".

In other words there will be two HTTP's, 2.0 for Google and in general content providers and whatnot, and HTTP 1.1 for everything else.

Comment Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score 1) 353

A lot of these addons have millions of downloads. Perhaps browser makers need to get the message and include popular functionality that people want.

Sadly, things look like they're heading in the opposite direction. The first thing I do with a new install of Chromefox is download a pile of extensions to turn it back into Firefox, but it seems like every new release requires even more extensions to undo the Chromefox braindamage. So at least for that browser, the developers are making changes that force you to download more extensions, not less.

Comment Re:Are you freaking serious? (Score 1) 83

Have we slipped so far down the performance-orientated slide that we are impressed by *how well a dungeon generator runs on an i7 with 16GB of RAM.

Ah yes, but it's running VMWare running FreeBSD emulating Linux running Qemu running Windows XP running AppleWin running the dungeon generator written in Applesoft Basic for a 1MHz 6502 in 1979, and that's worthy of the front page of Slashspot.

(Oh year, "Apple II forever!").

Comment Re:Now you have the choice (Score 1) 148

With Windows Phone failing to make a dent on the smartphone market

It may have failed to make a dent on the smartphone market, but it's made a considerable dent (more like a smoking crater) in the desktop PC market. MS claims that they'll fix some of that in Windows 10 (Windows Phone, aka. 8, being so had that they skipped an entire version number to get away from it), but I'm taking a wait-and-see approach.

Comment Re:Which one for "default"? (Score 1) 249

I've got an Onkyo surround sound receiver and psb speakers/sub. Paid about 100 bucks for it all at Goodwill, sounds at least as good as the 'audiophile' system I put a couple thousand dollars into back in the 80's

And that pretty much sums up the problem with this survey, it's not really "How good is your audio system" it's "How much money did you spend on your audio system". Based on actual measurements with test instruments (rather than golden-ears subjective wank), my $150 O2 beats $10,000 amps ($50,000, $100,000, the sky's the limit), which means to answer this survey I'd need an option to choose "super cheap, excellent performance". Since the survey equates cost with performance, there's no way to do this. Perhaps if I got a Tice clock and some Brilliant Pebbles and strapped them to my O2 I'd be able to say "super expensive, excellent performance"?

Comment Re:Drama queen (Score 1) 196

Extensions are what got me to switch away from IE way back in the day. There's a core half dozen of them that are invaluable.

Unfortunately in recent years the core half-dozen critical extensions are the ones you need to undo all the crap that's been done with Chromefox and get it back to being Firefox. Only after you've applied those can you start enhancing its functionality.

Still, without those you'd be stuck with using Chromefox, at which point you may as well just switch to Chrome anyway.

Comment Look at what happened the last time... (Score 5, Funny) 418

... it was disaster:

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long... I will type as fast as I can.

DO NOT USE THE CABLES!

We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this... accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the... whispers... began.

Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly... we began to UNDERSTAND.

No, no, please! I don't want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out... oh, god, the screaming... the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!

WHY CAN'T I FORGET THE WORDS???

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

Do not use the cables!

Comment Re:incredibly interesting phenomenon (Score 0) 33

Thanks to the fact that the Moon is tidally locked, we can only see 50% of it's surface on any given night.

"No one quite knows where the moon came from, but it's as old as the Earth, or very nearly. And it's survived this long because it has the most perfect defence system ever evolved. It's Tidally Locked. It doesn't exist when it's being observed. The moment it's seen by any other living creature it freezes into rock. In the sight of any living thing, it literally turns into stone. And you can't kill a stone. Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. Then, oh yes, it can. And I'm sorry. I am very, very sorry. It's up to you now. Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. It's fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and DON'T blink. Good luck".

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