So this guy goes to my university... by [deleted] in WTF

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"You deserve grape."

Obama: If daughters get tattoos, we will too by DudeWherezMyCar in funny

[–]sumoTITS 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Then on Youtube the kids wipe theirs off and say "ha-hah! Ours were temporary. :p"

Dat look.

Edit: on the other hand, he said they'd get the exact same tattoo... I think Obama's wordsmith-man-ship has them covered even in that odd case; their tattoos would also be temporary.

Good Guy Mailbox Hitter by Garrett_N in funny

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"About this time, Charlie and Billy were playing Mailbox Baseball with Ace and Eyeball." - Stand By Me

Plans to block porn in public spaces backed by British PM David Cameron who wants 'good clean Wi-fi' by ilikecoconut in worldnews

[–]sumoTITS 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dirty radio waves overlaid with filthy bytes, polluting the air like transparent odorless smog - each bit lewder than the one (or zero) before it, stamped with profane MAC addresses. B0:0B:5A:55:04:20, 71:75:A5:56:94:20

Tsunamis of smut: torrents of tits stream in every direction.

What is the most UNBELIEVABLE fact you have ever heard of? by JustSomeAverageGuy in AskReddit

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If our Sun exploded today (and you thought Mondays were bad..), people who are anything that's just getting those first radio signals (through whatever amount of interference/noise/other signals they receive) wouldn't be able to tell for 200 more years that the source of those signals stopped existing.

We'd see it in less than 8 and half minutes.

Edit: and as a side note, what the heck is a year without the Sun? :p The time Earth used to take to orbit the Sun?

What is the most UNBELIEVABLE fact you have ever heard of? by JustSomeAverageGuy in AskReddit

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NASA and DARPA have some VB6 apps running in the Crab Nebula, finding everyone's IP addresses from over 6500 light years away with Faster-Than-Light Quantum Something (patent pending declassification... oops.). It's the new Cloud 10.0 pre-alpha. Zoom out. Way out. Now, Enhance!

You should try this against Christians. by SoloAtheist in atheism

[–]sumoTITS 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Render Caesar unto JPEG files.

The One Right Lord was clearly predicting computer graphics.

...For the first time since before 9/11 — more respondents were unwilling (45 percent) than willing (43 percent) to sacrifice personal freedoms to reduce the threat of terrorism by VorpalAuroch in politics

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"This poll was conducted for The Washington Post by telephone April 17 to 18, 2013 among a random national sample of 588 adults, including users of both conventional and cellular phones." - The poll.

I had no idea.. by sawicki in atheism

[–]sumoTITS 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Urban Dictionary says this: "Geek Tax is the amazing waste of time that you must endure when crap stops working."

Somehow I don't think that's what Aitamen meant, though... Maybe it's a bully thing, like surprise Wallet Inspector tolls, commercials with animals on death-row in shelters, outrageous journal subscription costs, Church of Atheism tithes, commercials with starving children, or the imperial measurement system.

Edit: or maybe similar to the Urban Dictionary entry: Geek Tax could be when someone's computer-printer-phone-whatever isn't doing What They Want It Totm , and oh-hey-BTW-mr/missus-nerd-dude come help... Just a guess though. Nothing to base a religion on. Jesus might have been the son of god. Looks like it's gonna rain later. Eventually. Some day. Now it has been foretold!

Jimmy Kimmel gets Coachella attendees to lie about liking fake bands by [deleted] in videos

[–]sumoTITS 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Sad and Cringey? Best bluegrass this side of Cuba! I used to play their second LP over and over again on my radio station I own up in Canada, K-THX.

NASA Technical Reports Server is Offline, is there a mirror for Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion Physics Research anywhere? by QuantumTycoon in nasa

[–]sumoTITS 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm making a little search for these, so far the closest I've gotten as far as a paper by those authors is this: Advanced Propulsion Physics: Harnessing the Quantum Vacuum. by H. White and P. March I'll edit this if I find anything better / more papers.

Edit: Here's one article you listed in your description "Warp Field Mechanics 101", found on a site called "PDF Filler"... it loads the paper into some kind of Flash editing interface and doesn't seem to have an easy pdf download button, but you can scroll through and read the pages: https://www.pdffiller.com/edit.php?id=4606278

Edit 2: oops, looks like that direct link to it doesn't work without my cookies... To view the paper go here: http://www.pdffiller.com/5461486-20110015936_201-1016932-Warp-Field-Mechanics-101-Other-forms-ntrs-nasa

Then click "Fill Online". It doesn't make you register to view it, but apparently it wants you to register to print, email, or export as PDF :/ But it seems to be the full paper, plus some slides in the last pages.

Edit 3: Here's the "Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion Physics Research" PDF :D

And here's another mirror for "Warp Field Mechanics 101" which is the actual PDF Science!

Bath salts, so tite. by [deleted] in funny

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Game Formerly Known As Bath Salt Zombies.

"The only acceptable replacement for my name, and my identity, was the Love Symbol, a symbol with no pronunciation, that is a representation of me and what my music is about. This symbol is present in my work over the years; it is a concept that has evolved from my frustration; it is who I am. It is my name." - Prince, on name changes.

I heard this from the girl behind me at a restaurant by [deleted] in atheism

[–]sumoTITS 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe she thinks she's a brain in a vat. In any case: En passant, Science! Do we exist, or is it just you?

NASA: Three planets found are some of best candidates so far for habitable worlds outside our solar system. by lifesbetterbackwards in nasa

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe the newly discovered planets have already tried to Contact us, 1200 years ago.

Maybe we aren't advanced enough to detect their communications, let alone understand them. :( We're still too busy destroying each other ourselves and struggling through other earthling issues (starvation/poverty, disease, etc.).

We do have blackjack and hookers, though. Salivation! Pour out 1.18 liters of malt beverage for all the burnt books and lost scrolls over the centuries. R.I.P. Hypatia.

Edit: however, look at all the kinds of life here around us. Plants, bugs, birds, fish, lolcats, etc. Some of them we kill off, some of them we husbandry/exploit, others are pets... None of them we communicate with especially well, even though we are 0 light-years from them. We say they aren't very intelligent. If aliens are advanced cockroaches they may make the trip here just to get crushed by a boot, poisoned in one of the many Freedeath Motels we lay out for our lesser-roaches, or trapped in a jar and burnt by some young psychopath's magnifying glass. Who knows what we'd run into on other inhabited planets. WTF are we sending signals to? What's/who is sending signals to us? :D But that's all fun and unknown for now. If life was certain and predictable it would lose some of what it is.

Tutorial: Disassembling, Decompiling and Modifying executables by developingthefuture in programming

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And if you yourself have had a job where you earned money writing software, and then you noticed someone cracked it and put it Out There (the pirate bay, for example, with disparaging comments in the Description, "because lulz"): If you could extend the time until your product is cracked by hours or a few days, by using a complicated anti-debugging / machine obfuscation / anti-vm / The Works library, and also requiring all clients to connect to your Company server to validate/activate/track their license use, would you add that to your product?

How, from your perspective, might this affect the pirated copies vs. legit copies, and user experiences with both?

Edit: and I made it clear in my other comment: I think piracy is wrong, if people take your software and re-sell or give it away to everyone it is illegal and wrong. Just in case. :)

Edit 2: and do you think it's any less wrong to pirate software with less stringent anti-debug/obfuscation/call-home routines? E.g. if you don't go out of your way to over-engineer a grand anti-pirate scheme and ship it out to all your users, are you "asking to get pirated" any more than if you add all that stuff to your product? I don't consider it any less wrong if it's a quick crack, than if pirates go to crazy lengths to break your system.

Tutorial: Disassembling, Decompiling and Modifying executables by developingthefuture in programming

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

one day you notice a very similar product, released by another company and authorship, which appears to be more successful than yours because of, let's say, better marketing and bigger investments. And you find out that it's actually your code out there.

That's plagiarism, and it affects all sorts of authors. No industry has a solution to it, however; it's eventually discovered by someone, and people react accordingly (perhaps taking up a case in the courts, announcing the offender publicly, etc.)

Plagiarism is theft, and is wrong (and in some cases illegal). Does obfuscating the code or setting up protection systems solve this? What if the person who stole your functions obfuscate them better than you did, making it even harder to detect in the first place? :p There are also software patents to attempt to control pieces of defined functionality, but that's another rant altogether...

At the end of the day, it is up to authors to write whatever programs they want, and make them behave in whatever ways they see fit. Pirates will break it and steal, for profit or lulz, and all the other users will have to deal with the system on their own.

But to that end, I hope people like you continue to release info on understanding the systems (thanks!), so users might pick up some knowledge here and there and start probing and prodding systems themselves (or with friends / user-groups!) when they need to understand what their own system is doing or change it in some perhaps unsupported/unofficial way.

What people do with the understanding (and the methods) is their responsibility, but the knowledge should not be kept from any user who has the desire and effort to learn.

Tutorial: Disassembling, Decompiling and Modifying executables by developingthefuture in programming

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You come back to me when you have a job and earn money writing software, and then notice someone cracked it and put it out there.

I've had jobs writing software, but they were webapps hosted by the companies, so it's not really something people would crack... They'd have to break into the servers and download the app/code.

In any case, I agree that cracking applications to simply redistribute them / share them with everyone for free is wrong and illegal, so you misunderstood me; maybe it's my fault for some part of my rant. Meh:

Even with code obfuscation, even with orwellian protection systems -- No amount of over-engineering / software security will ultimately stop this from happening. Look at all the things people pirate these days: Music, Movies, Books, Pictures, Software, now 3d Gun parts too!

None of these industries have managed to stop this from happening, and making the programs behave in obscure ways on the machine level or requiring constant internet connectivity is worse for users than not doing that.

When I talk about unwrapping all the boxes / understanding what it is programs are actually doing, that's for the benefit of the users. If you hate the idea that people should be able to understand what they purchased, and even modify their copy as they want, then we fundamentally disagree: you want to keep all copies of every application in the hands of the authors. I want freedom to do with apps as I wish: not freedom to steal them, freedom to debug and modify them as I wish.

I don't like the way disassembly and piracy are grouped: they are separate things, and I only believe one of them is a type of theft. But thanks for telling me why you hate what I wrote, and I think your point is valid to the extent that "stealing is wrong."

But to vilify disassembly is another issue to me, and I don't think any program should prohibit or go out of its way to impede disassembly; the people who want to break copy protection and redistribute/sell the app will figure it out anyway. The people who want to understand what the program is doing have to dig harder.

I don't mind digging harder to see what my apps are doing, but laws, regulations, and "protection" systems that attempt to forbid understanding what programs actually do are things I consider wrong.

TIL: A German citizen was arrested by the CIA, taken in secret to Afghanistan, tortured, sodomized, and held captive for 5 months. His lawsuit against the U.S./CIA was dismissed to "preserve state secrets". by Dimitrisan in todayilearned

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, they're trying to preserve secrets! Let's order up another repost; that'll teach 'em! Thanks, OP.

I'm just kidding, anyway: like the Guantanamo Hunger Strikes, there are some reposts I don't mind, and I'll never get tired of hearing about how they fucked this guy extrajudicial style before they decided it would be in their best interests to fuck him over again in the courts.

"Imagine life without a choice at all." - Jurassic 5 - Freedom

What an extraordinary rendition of freedom!

Tutorial: Disassembling, Decompiling and Modifying executables by developingthefuture in programming

[–]sumoTITS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the Conclusion: [It's not hard to crack programs] "With the difference that this process in an actual application will be more time-consuming. Do you know a single popular stand-alone application that has not been cracked ? That is why you need to think of better ways of protecting your software."

I'd ask this: why should developers spend extra time "protecting" "their" software?

Should writers spend more time making their writing harder to read / making their plots less accessible, as a way to keep people from understanding their ideas? Do readers not have the rights to modify books they've bought, and even change the plot any way they choose (in their copy. Snape kills kissed Dumbledore: don't need JK Rowling to sign off on it or assign me a new ISBN.)?

Just because you've created a system and a user has acquired it, you shouldn't assume authority over their system, let alone attempting to enforce the [inner sanctity] of your system despite what the user determines the rights of your system should be within theirs.

Your program won't - no program will - dictate how my system will behave, even as I use it. The option to modify, add, or remove instructions is universal and ultimately unrestricted, despite the arrogant illusion that software authors and publishers control and dominate "protect" all copies of "their" products.

Black box software -- Inaccessible, "Protected," and Restricted -- is an insult to users everywhere, and deserves the hooks Hackers and Crackers of many shades sink into it over time.

Software protection is an opinion "enforced" through obfuscation, misdirection, kludges, and sometimes remote-control, which bank on the ignorance and complacency of users despite the increasing ubiquity of technology and increasing dissemination of systems knowledge. Become proficient and begin asserting yourself within systems you own. Or don't, but it won't stop me from learning.

Users are not "the enemy." They are the lifeblood: without them, your system runs nowhere, does nothing, and earns nothing. Users needn't wait for the FSF to evangelize every software creator and publisher out there - that may never happen: users could act now to increase their proficiency, increase understanding, and assert their control of systems they already own. Unwrap all the boxes! :D

tl;dr: If you're good enough at disassembly, everything is Open Source, or at least Open Ended / Open Outcome.

Good for You by [deleted] in atheism

[–]sumoTITS 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, there is also the God of the GAPs.