Alan’s Comments

• Nov 12th, 2013 @ 7:21pm

  (untitled comment)

  on When Is A Lyric Site More Than A Lyric Site?
  I buy lots of CDs -- 700 to 800 at last count -- and go to lots of live music events (usually three or four a month. Unfortunately, I am now hard of hearing and have difficulty making out the words. I depend on lyrics sites to enable me to fully enjoy the music I have purchased, and this often leads to me buying even more.
  
  Does the music industry really want to discourage customers like me?
• Nov 12th, 2013 @ 7:12pm

  Re: Difficulties in building

  on DailyDirt: Not So Secret Nuclear Weapons
  The primary difficulty is obtaining the high-grade fissile material. Once you have that, the rest is (relatively) easy.
  
  The second difficulty is casting and machining the stuff without killing ourself in the process. If you are lucky, you will die (relatively) quickly (hours to days). If not, you will linger (in a most unpleasant manner) for much longer.
  
  There are many other engineering and logistical hurdles, but nothing a rogue government, bent on having such a weapon, couldn't handle. Any organization smaller than a government would be hard-pressed to find the resources.
• Sep 30th, 2013 @ 6:49pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Report From The Court Room On Latest Prenda Hearing In Minnesota: Another Hearing, Another Mess
  out_of_the_blue: Since you obviously don't like this site or the subjects covered, why on earth do you even bother to read it, let alone post comments? Just go find a site that caters to your wants and desires. You will be much happier.
• Sep 11th, 2013 @ 6:42pm

  Re: Reading headers

  on Latest Report On Data Breaches: More Outsider Attacks, Many Of Them State-Sponsored
  I agree that your examples would fool a large percentage of the population. However, the percentage of phishes I receive with such good headers is in the single digits.
  
  My modest proposal is for email reading programs to alert users when an email's "From:" address does not match the sending domain. Needless to say, there are many cases where this is perfectly normal, so you would need a way to whitelist certain senders/domain combinations.
• Sep 11th, 2013 @ 9:41am

  (untitled comment)

  on Latest Report On Data Breaches: More Outsider Attacks, Many Of Them State-Sponsored
  Good grief, doesn't anyone know how to read headers these days? When you get an email that claims to be from BankOfNebraska, did it actually come from a server at bankofnebraska.com? If it actually came from dsl3241.users.orlando.shadyisp.com, that should tell anyone with half a brain that it is a scam.