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Comment: WGET? The Devil's Tool! (Score 5, Funny) 120

Lee added that the Scripps Hackers eventually used Wget to find and download "the Companies' confidential files." (Wget was the same tool used by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in the film The Social Network to collect student photos from various Harvard University directories.) The rest of the letter pretty much blamed the "Scripps Hackers" for the cost of breach notifications, demanded Scripps hand over all evidence as well as the identity and intentions of the hackers, before warning that Scripps will be sued.

Folks, there was a big bad security breach. Now, *adjusts his massive belt buckle* we're investigating this like we would any other serious crime. And right now we're just trying to identify weapons used in this heinous attack. Now, we've discovered that the hackers were using a very vicious mechanism in this attack. In a murder, you might find a revolver used to put two bullets into the back of a poor old defenseless lady's skull in order to get all her coupons and a couple of Indian head pennies out of her purse. Or perhaps in a pedophile case, you'll find the "secret candy" that was used to lure the children into a white panel van with painted over windows.

*expels a long tortured sigh*

Well, I gotta say, in my thirty years on the force, I wish we were only dealing with something like that today, honest to God Almighty I really do. Instead this artifact was discovered at the scene of the crime. Now, I'm not asking you to understand that -- hell, I'd warn you against even openin' up your browser to the devil's toolbox. But let me, a trained law enforcement professional, take the time to explain the gruesome evidence just one HTTP request away from you and your chillun'. The page is black. Black as a moonless night sky when raptors swoop from the murky inky nothing to take your kids and livestock back up with them silently. On it is a bunch of white text that makes no sense to any God fearun' man on this here Earth. That's what they call a "man page" probably because it is the ultimate culmination of man's sin and lo and behold it displays a guide to exact torture on innocent web servers across this great and holy internet.

Even if you want to use this "man page" for WGET to learn how to use Satan's server scythe, you would have to read through almost twenty pages of incomprehensible technobabble like what that kraut over in Cali -- the one who took his wife's life -- spoke. And if you want to just see an example, it's not at the top! No, why, it's all the way down at the bottom. For this one, they don't even have examples. Just enough options to kill a man. Probably gave Steve Jobs cancer, they never proved all these options in these pages didn't. Buried in the mud of a thousand evils lie more evils.

And why, oh why are we even wasting taxpayer money on these Scripps Journos? Who needs a trial when the evidence is in the tools they used? Folks, I think it's time we WGET one last thing, I'll WGET a rope and you WGET your pitchforks and torches ... let's go down to Scripps and put all this computer business behind us. Okay?

Comment: I Guess This Is Allowed Now? (Score 3, Informative) 43

by eldavojohn (#43776433) Attached to: Book Review: Locked Down: Information Security For Lawyers
Sorry to respond to my own comment but for Ben Rothke it looks like he just reposts his Amazon reviews here:

Book Review: The Plateau Effect: Getting From Stuck To Success is identical to this Amazon review.

Book Review: The Death of the Internet is identical to this Amazon review.

Book Review: Everyday Cryptography is identical to this Amazon review.

Book Review: Liars and Outliers is identical to this Amazon Review.

It just keeps going ...

Comment: Also a Violation of the /. Book Review Guidelines (Score 3) 43

by eldavojohn (#43776361) Attached to: Book Review: Locked Down: Information Security For Lawyers

I post this having not read a single page of this book. I was interested in getting this book for my attorney wife. When looking at it on AMAZON.COM, I noticed that the post here is a copy of only ONE of TWO reviews the book has on Amazon.com. The other review is HORRIBLE. http://www.amazon.com/Locked-Down-Information-Security-Lawyers/product-reviews/1614383642/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0 Read/order with caution.

As someone who occasionally writes reviews for Slashdot (and usually reads all of the ones posted), this is a clear violation of the book review guidelines:

First, an important one: by submitting your review to Slashdot, you represent that the review is your own work, that it is original to Slashdot, and that it is unencumbered by any existing or anticipated contractual relationship; further, you are granting Slashdot permission to publish your review, including any editing the Slashdot editorial team finds necessary and appropriate. (Major edits will involve consultation by email or other means.) If you've reviewed the book elsewhere anywhere besides a personal home page (for instance, on Amazon) please be sure that your review for Slashdot is substantially different.

(emphasis mine) There is no difference that I can see ...

Comment: And Yet You STILL Refuse to Name Them? (Score 4, Interesting) 84

by eldavojohn (#43773937) Attached to: Interviews: McAfee Says House Fire Was No Accident

No, of course not. And once I left the country, all attempts to do any formal charges simply disappeared because there was no way that they could do any formal charges. They had no evidence. They had nothing on me other than I refused to give a $2 million donation back in 2012. You know, so all they can do now is cause me a little bit of chaos and inconvenience, which I think they can cause me no more now.

As I tried to ask during the first interview who are these people? What have you got to lose in naming them right now? Do they have power in the United States? What's holding you back?!

They can cause you no more chaos or inconvenience and yet you refuse to name them -- WHY? This could only be further evidence in your accusations! Do I have to buy your book to find out or something?

Comment: Brain Dead Action Trumps Philosophy & Ethics (Score 4, Insightful) 511

by eldavojohn (#43756321) Attached to: Review: <em>Star Trek: Into Darkness</em>
I haven't seen Into Darkness but a lot of this review covered what was painfully realized in the first movie: no longer is Trek about philosophy, ethics, tolerance, gray areas and real world problems. It's mostly absolute good versus absolute evil. I think the driving force behind the bad guy in the first movie was largely a misunderstanding ... which is incredibly boring. His motivation was confusingly laughable.

Unsurprisingly I'm pretty sure I heard JJ Abrams tell Jon Stewart that "he never liked Star Trek" on The Daily Show. Well, now he's had a chance to kill it by turning it 100% into a modern day blockbuster action flick and shirking any attempt to tackle an interesting philosophical or ethical dilemma as the main plot. As the modern reemergence of comic book and super hero movies have shown, those films are a dime a dozen that anyone can do. Tackling something deeper while still holding our attention is the hard part. The Watchmen was a good candidate for it but fell short. I'm sure JJ Abrams would rather cover up the complicated parts that question good versus evil with another lens flare.

Comment: No. Bad Conclusion. Bad. (Score 4, Informative) 116

by eldavojohn (#43712423) Attached to: Carnivorous Plant Ejects Junk DNA

The finding overturns the notion that this repetitive, non-coding DNA, popularly called 'junk' DNA, is necessary for life.

False. Unsurprisingly, nowhere in the paper was this dubious claim even approached. Instead you can find this even in the summary:

However, extreme genome size reductions have been reported in the angiosperm family tree.

Emphasis mine. And then further into the actual paper:

Relaxed selection pressure for unnecessary functions probably led to gene losses, whereas in other cases, gene family expansions may have been promoted by selection. Evidence for localized selection on the U. gibba gene complement, however, does not provide support for the existence of genome-wide selective forces that might favour reduction of nonessential, non-coding DNA.

There would likely be no bladderwort had there been no junk DNA in its ancestral line and other findings point to such noncoded DNA as necessary for evolution.

I believe a more prudent falsifiable hypothesis would run along the lines of (and I'm sorry, I'm only a software developer): Due to relaxed external selective pressures the bladderwort's RNA polymerase has become adept at writing coding errors to the 3% noncoded DNA during replication and this actually still serves a vital function -- especially if the bladderwort is to survive in a much larger window than a few generations.

Comment: And You Are Some Magic Insect Sorting Entity? (Score 4, Informative) 624

by eldavojohn (#43709229) Attached to: UN Says: Why Not Eat More Insects?

I say "Because OMFG, gross!!!"

If you live in the United States, you likely already engage in accidental entomophagy. Allow me to introduce you to the USDA's guide to what are the acceptable levels of insects in your food. Go head and CTRL+F on that page for 'insects.'

Having particularly good eyesight, I don't think I've ever eaten a blackberry that didn't have thrips or aphids on it. Guess what? They're delicious on blackberries!

Of course, getting my Wilderness Survival merit badge on my way to Eagle Scout gave me the opportunity to forage for edible insects and I would actually recommend the fly larvae that attach to grassland stalks and form 'bulbs' around them. Taste like walnuts! Too bad it takes forever to harvest them or I'd make a product out of that for the granola-brains community.

Earth

"Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals 694

Posted by samzenpus
from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii, which sets the global benchmark. More than half of plants and a third of animal species are likely to see their living space halved by 2080 if current trends continue."

Comment: Perhaps Afsluitdijk Dike? (Score 1) 355

by eldavojohn (#43667395) Attached to: Mars One Has 78,000 Applicants

Assuming that the calculation in the summary is accurate (which is just as valid as assuming a given country) we are looking for a location that has a coast to coast distance of between 30 and 40 km.

WELL if we want to get in the business of apologetic measurements, I believe Mars One is based in the Netherlands. So assuming that back of an envelope calculation was being applied to the location of operations, we could assume they are referring to the inverted shores that are the endpoints of Afsluitdijk Dike which happen to connect North Holland province with Friesland province and measures 32 kilometers in length.

Comment: So It's An Indirect Intangible Gamble? (Score 5, Insightful) 232

by eldavojohn (#43613779) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Would You Accept 'Bitcoin-Ware' Apps?
So basically you're proposing a move from just give me a little cash upfront to let me leech off your electricity bill in a ridiculously circuitous way to gamble for BTC (keeping in mind that the more people that adopt your model of "BitCoin-Ware" the more people will be vying for BTC the less your expected value will return)?

An interesting idea and definitely one for the mathematicians but simply unsustainable and risky and ... I guess deceptive if you don't point out the small cost to their electrical bill ...

Comment: On Hezbollah, Zetas and MDPV (Score 3, Interesting) 194

by eldavojohn (#43611709) Attached to: Interview: Ask John McAfee What You Will
Ars Technica ran an inditing article on your sanity in which you made statements on the virtues of MDPV (bath salts), having three informants in the Zeta Cartel and also informants in Nicaragua that had made contact with Hezbollah's camp. To put my question succinctly: what the hell, man? Where have your James "Psychonaut" Bond travels taken you to recently?

Comment: Why George Jung? (Score 5, Interesting) 194

by eldavojohn (#43611565) Attached to: Interview: Ask John McAfee What You Will

"Boston George" Jung (a man who has lived quite an unusual life himself) has been tapped to write McAfee's biography titled, No Domain.

I don't get it. Jung is a convicted drug smuggler. You have had no such charges ever filed against you (to my knowledge) by the United States so, if nothing more than a publicity stunt, why did you pick him to write your biography? If you feel you are wrongly accused, I can understand why you would pick someone wrongly accused to write your biography -- they can relate. But George Jung was certainly a key part of Pablo Escobar's deadly and pervasive criminal organization. You are (again, to my knowledge) far from that so why bait the readers with that author as a link? I have had very little associations with you and illegal drug activity but now I think you view yourself as a modern George Jung, am I wrong in making this assumption?

Comment: The GSU Raid and the Unnamed Politician (Score 4, Interesting) 194

by eldavojohn (#43611449) Attached to: Interview: Ask John McAfee What You Will
Almost exactly one year ago your dog was killed (my sympathies), your passport was confiscated and your house searched by a Gang Suppression Unit (GSU) while you lived in Belize. Why not publicly name names and provide as much detailed evidence as possible to reveal this horrible corruption and abuse of something that is supposed to stop crime? Who was it that tried to extort political money from you? Is there anyway to verify?

Comment: What Happened with Vice.com? (Score 5, Interesting) 194

by eldavojohn (#43611385) Attached to: Interview: Ask John McAfee What You Will
While you were moving around, Vice.com got to spend time with you. If memory serves me, it was later revealed that the image they uploaded with you had GPS data that you then claimed to be spoofed. Coincidentally the news styled documentary they were going to do with you never seemed to surface ... now that things have died down can you give more context to that whole situation?

Comment: Re: Dumb title: CO2 is not "dirty" (Score 1) 260

by eldavojohn (#43605361) Attached to: Energy Production Is As 'Dirty' As Ever

Where did you dig up that link? It's comedy gold! Successfully nailed every denialist cliche I could think of.

I'm gonna have to add this "Nongovernmental Planel (sic) on Climate Change" to my Humour feed for my morning chuckle.

Please, I don't deserve all the credit, thank H. Leighton Steward and coal baron Corbin Robertson. And from the looks of it, the Koch brothers somewhere up that chain ... did you know it's a 501(c)(3) and has a sibling (but separate!) ad-buying 501(c)(4) named CO2 is Green?

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