Posts by MrT

Lily Allen gets 'social networking' TV show

And they want to pull BBC4...?

Talk of ditching an entire channel, but throw the moolah at something that sounds like a cross between Charlotte Church's fiasco and any local commercial radio drive-time show.

It'll probably be repeated several times a week too, just in case we managed to find something worthwhile on the dwindling number of other channels the first time it was on, or (more likely) the stuff we watched instead the first time is also being repeated again at all the other times this is on. 'Dave', anyone?

It's enough to make you just switch off your television set and go out and do something less boring instead... like do the dishes or cut the grass, or just stand in a field for an hour.

HTC TyTN II smartphone

@ Shaun, Steve Foster

:Shaun - most will bundle TomTom, but only the really basic one where you've still got to shop for maps (even for the zone you're in). Options: T-Mobile wil sell one with CoPilot on, but to be honest any satnav software for WM6 will work (TomTom, SmartST etc) so long as you can see the GPS icon (unlocks with a registry key change, but there's digging to do for that). I use SmartST from an old Navman PiN570, and MemoryMap for times away from the blacktop stuff, although the maps for that do take a touch more space - like 3.6GB for all of UK, rather than a few hundred MB for street nav.

:Steve Foster - anything from XDA-Developers isn't the official T-Mobile release - it'll be official if it arrives from T-Mobile on a CD with their logos all over it. Guys like JasJamming (Black) and the rest who cook ROMs are on the ball when incorporating whatever customisations folk require (he even used to package about four different versions for a few big providers, but stopped a while back). Often it's simple - the T-Mobile icon bar with Web'n'walk etc on it is just one file (IIRC it's a dll) that can be added to any mix. The trend these days is to provide a stripped out WM6 image, then a bunch of CAB files to install whatever you want.

Still, in the end you've customised your Vario to become something you want - not hard, but the method is full of points where the device could end up being bricked, so in reality any official WM6 upgrade would probably involve an invitation letter to take the phone to an agent to cut down the risk of 'dead' handsets.

@ AC re:T-Mobile and Vario II WM6 upgrade...

T-Mob have told myself and several colleagues that they'll never be releasing the WM6 OX for Tytn/Vario II, despite HTC releasing the reference code back in January to all operators. Orange, on the otherhand, have responded that if enough business users demand it, HTC can produce a suitably citrus-flavoured version of WM6 for them. So, there's a chance all the ones supplied by my employer (at basically handset cost to the person getting it) will be upgraded.

However, for the rest who saved a shedload by getting the T-Mobile Web'n'walk version (and I only paid 50 quid for mine on a £25 contract back last December - just pick the greenest guy in the shop and start talking price-match; it should have been over £120), we have only one option - to follow MrVanx's HowTo and burn Black, Dutty's or one of half-a dozen other cooked WM6 firmware onto it (if only to unlock stuff like the GPS settings that T-Mobile hide away to sell more copies of CoPilot). Going from v1.05 to v1.38 or v1.41 on the radio code even on WM5 is a substantial improvement in itself - hardly any drop-out of signal, and much better on 3.5G.

Actually we have two options - one of my colleagues is already trying to blag an upgrade to the Vario III without changing contracts etc on the grounds that he needs something or other to do with WM6.

But at least this sort of thing is possible with this smartphone - for me it's the best handset I've owned. And for the photographers out there, best get the SE K800/810/850 range - a properly good camera-phone (my wife has one) - a camera with a phone added, rather than vice versa. BTW the camera is one of the weakest features on an iPhone, which doesn't even do video-capture - very surprising for such a media-rich handset.

Aussie boffins translate whale chat

Gary Larson...

... had it right with his cartoon about the first guy to invent a translation device for dogs - who found out all the dogs were saying 'woof'...

The whales are going 'weeee' and 'whoooop' like a kid playing on a swing or slide. When the boats go away, they get back to chatting about krill.

UK iPhone customers to get fairer usage

Anyone read the new O2 T&Cs yet...?

...cos there's more to worry about than the 200MB limit at first glance...

nip off to http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/gettingstarted/activation_large.html and about 2/5ths through the presenter flashes through the Apple and presumably the old, still-to-be-revised O2 T&Cs.

Now, I appreciate that the legal team at O2 may be busy scribbling out the final paragraph where the 'fair use' thing is mentioned, but just above it is a list of other 'not permitted' uses.

As well as the usual one about VoIP, these include:

- Instant messaging (no iChat then, or whatever the equivalent of Communicator is on Apple - is even text-based IM out?)

- P2P file sharing (no-one in their right mind will set up a BitTorrent seeder or join a swarm, but does this include swapping ringtones etc between handsets?)

- Video and TV streaming (so no websites that retain the media file, such as news providers)

- Use in conjunction with routers. I know they mean that the iPhone cannot be the gateway to a router, in line with not unlocking the modem if plugged into a laptop, but this bit doesn't make a distinction between iPhone as gateway or iPhone as roaming client on, say, BT Openzone/FON. Isn't the iPhone supposed to switch to WiFi automatically when detected and use that in preference to EDGE? Or are O2 trying to screw 'excess use' charges out of people already since they device will do lots of data shuffling without their explicit say - so witness the huge bills for use outside of the country, for example?

Someone tell me they understand how this thing works - really - because the iPhone contract looks like it's a mildly tweaked version of everyone else's, which includes the operator desperately trying to protect it's voice/text revenue stream by knocking everything else mildly on the back of the head.

And non-iPhone 200MB from O2? Why does anyone stick with that when the same cash buys much more shackled 'unlimited' usage from other providers like T-Mobile?

It's been a long day so far...

Asbestos coat. Tin hat. Door.

BT home router wide open to hijackers

@ Mark

Folk will move on from this thread pretty quickly as the story gets older I guess, but it's still of interest...

I've also been in touch with BT, although they still respond that they are investigating. Until they've had a chance to check this against the new FON-enabled firmware they can't really say for surer.

Are they attacking the router directly...?

From the GNUCitizen article, Adrian Pastor says this in one of the comments..."If you are a fan of Firefox extensions, NoScript filters cross-site POST requests from untrusted to trusted sites. This protection should avoid someone exploiting your router if properly configured."

This suggests that the vulnerability in the hub uses a vulnerability in the client machine to access either the SuperUser or remote assistance Tech user accounts. If a Firefox extension can prevent the hack from working, then it is another of those foibles in IE that creates the pathway via the client machine. Would it be stopped by altering the IE security settings to block access across domains?

The standard way of gaining SuperUser rights to the HomeHub involves requesting a Remote Assistance session, then opening another browser window using the details on the RA request page. This gives access to the router's ini file and all that it controls. (including the user lists, password hashes, VoIP channels, etc). An attacker wouldn't need to do much to gain control - just insert their own hash for the Tech user, for example, or add another SuperUser

Mind you, when I tried it, after a soft reset the HH firewall bombed out to 'block all' (with no other options available) and although the VoIP channel still worked, nothing else could get out of the home network - PCs could find the Hub, the Hub reported a valid connection to the Internet, but the two sides were kept apart. Which also means the firewall doesn't watch the VoIP connection.

BTW, with all the FON stuff rolling out, there may be a potential WiFi risk - not sure yet if it's possible to attack a HH w new firmware to enable the 'BT Openzone' public access side of things without the hub owner knowing. However, (to answer myself from earlier), if the firewall works like it did in my test then the private network *may* be kept safe if someone on the public side visits and exploit site, but the VoIP traffic might still be at risk.

@ Mark

Fantastic! BT using cut'n'paste marketing material for their responses... Oh no! A ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal! Where's my towel? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ravenous+Bugblatter+Beast+of+Traal

I've checked the BT Broadband Forums and got this thread on the matter...

http://www.beta.bt.com/bta/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=376&tstart=0

Now, in the earlier version of that thread, Sandy Woolsgrove (who writes in other threads as if a BT Help employee) had said that BT were "checking the validity of this claim" - but it looks like the thread has been edited to remove this response...

That thread is about the FON firmware roll-out (amongst other stuff) - I wonder if the router can be compromised for all users by someone on the 'public' side accessing whatever website contains the hack? The blurb says the two channels are kept totally separate, but they all go down the same bb line. If so, it's not purely down to the HomeHub owner being careful...

WPA on 802.11B does work...

...but only if the firmware is updated by manufacturers. I've an iPaq 5550, with B-WiFi, and HP issued an upgrade about 2 years down the line from purchase to enable WPA - which it does fine. The difference between this and most consumer devices is it's a high-end business-oriented PDA and HP's customer base in that area have a bit more clout than someone buying the stuff that PC World sell to Joe Public. Cheaper stuff tends not to be upgradable if the firmware is burnt into ROM rather than flash RAM

It was a fairly hefty ROM image, needing three Softpaq updates to raise the radio firmware to the necessary level before the OS could be patched - get the order wrong and it won't even work on WEP. It's a bit like upgrading a Mobile 5 PDA or smartphone to Mobile 6, which is also possible, but so is the likelyhood of 'bricking' the thing if the steps are not followed precisely. Not the sort of thing most people would consider, and also not the sort of thing Nintendo would like most people to do - they don't want a flood of warranty returns on bricked DS's because the official patch failed...

So, the DS could use B and WPA if Nintendo so wish - may need a different ROM image (not sure if it's home-flashable) - but there's nothing to stop a B device using higher encryption than WEP. Of course, it takes more out of the CPU to run the higher authentication, so the device would slow down - maybe B-WEP on a DS is the best compromise that doesn't impact gameplay?

Here's a solution though - hook up a cheap B access point to the DMZ of the faster G or pre-N router - then let the firewalls sort out authorised traffic between the home network and the less secure DS. Not got a DMZ?

As for the HomeHub, it runs a modified Linux OS - have these guys suggested a hack to fix the hole? There's all sorts of stuff it can do that BT don't officially sanction (print-serving, use USB disks to provide NAS, etc). The user base should have enough sway with BT to press for changes to fix all the holes - there are over a million of them out there.