Posts by Vic

Suit settled, PS3 hacker donates $10,000 to EFF

Not so.

> Sony as no right no dictate what i can do with the hardware I OWN

Whilst that almost certainly *ought* to be the case, it is not.

The DMCA gives all sorts of rights to people who should not have them. But it is the Law in the US.

Vic.

Re: hmmm...

> One has to wonder why sony backed down so quickly from a fight they were fighting so fiercely?

Given the discrepancies between their pleadings to the court in this case, and their pleadings in the class-action suit, there is a strong chance that they would have been caught in a lie to the court. That's not a good way to go about winning.

The case they had presented - essentially claiming Hotz was subject to a legal agreement just because they found a username somewhat like him in their database - was always pretty weak. The judge gave them all sorts of latitude in discovery because they said it was imnportant; had the case come to trial and their discovery proved nothing, they would have been in for a serious judicial backlash. Judges don't like plaintiffs bending the truth.

It looks like Sony lawyers finally realised they were going to lose.

> only to settle it for a $10k donation to the EFF

Sony didn't settle for a $10K donation. They settled for a promise from Hotz not to tell the world the next time they did something hopeless on the security front.

The donation was Hotz's idea, to show that he wouldn't be benefiting from the legal fund donations should his legal costs not be that high in the end.

Vic.

DMCA

> At what point does doing what GeoHot did stop being 'jailbreaking' and

> start being DMCA violation?

There is no evidence it ever did.

Sony *claimed* this was a DMCA violation. That charge was not proven - and never will be, since the case has been dropped.

Vic.

Seagate to buy Samsung's disk drive biz?

That's the end of most RAID...

> So time to drop RAID-5? Use RAID-1 / RAID-10

RAID-5 is (temporarily) tolerant of one failure. RAID-1 is also tolerant of one failure.

If you're expecting multiple simultaneous failures, RAID-1 will give you no better resilience than RAID-5, as two disks out leaves you with none left.

RAID-10 really isn't much better - if you lose two drives of the same stripe, you've lost the lot.

Mixing manufacturers removes the common-mode issue, but it will take some serious statistical crunching to find out whether or not you're actually any less likely to lose your data...

Vic.

Strange...

> I've never seen a Samsung drive last for more that 12 months

I've had quite a few, and I've not had one fail yet.

Seagate drives, on the other hand, seem to be supremely unreliable. They have been ever since they bought Maxtor...

Vic.

IP registry goes to Defcon 1 as IPv4 doomsday nears

What for?

> 30 days to sell the unused non functional domains

That doesn't really help anyone.

We don't have a lack of domain names, we have a lack of available IPv4 addresses.

Unused domain names don't tend to tie up IP addresses...

Vic.

No it wouldn't.

> It would be like how the analogue spectrum is being taken away

It would be nothing like it.

RF spectrum is licenced. The licence issuer (the government) has the ability to control use of the spectrum by manipulation of those licences.

IP addresses are not licenced. They are handed out by the registries. But the early allocations pre-date those registries, and that is when huge allocations were made. No mechanism exists to revoke those allocations.

Vic.

It's a widespread problem...

> grabbed by American Universities

It's not just them. I've recently been working for a well-known multinational company with huge IPv4 allocations.

All machines have globally-routable IPv4 addresses, which are then firewalled to the very brink of usability. The company would actually benefit from a transition to private addressing and a NAT setup. An enormous number of IPv4 addresses could be returned to the pool.

That's not going to happen, though. Said company have outsourced their IT support, so such a move would cost them a fortune :-(

Vic.

Sony buries hatchet with GeoHot in PS3 modding case

Some sense,,,

> read the judgement on the Apple case, it doesn't allow people to Jailbreak.

It most certainly *does* permit jailbreaking. Phones are singled out in classes B and C, but class D would explicitly permit jailbreaking a gaming machine.

However, the provisos in that class *may* preclude publicising the work in the way that Hotz did; you'd have to get a court to try that to find out for sure.

Vic.

Is that so?

> the PS3 is locked up again.

Really?

All the info I've read says that you can't replace metldr without disabling all the software in circulation, since that is the key with which it is all signed.

And if you don't replace that key, then the root is live.

Vic.

Corrections...

> The only reason to remove OtherOS from existing systems was the

> security breech caused by GeoHot.

Hotz didn't cause a security breach. He discovered one. Sony caused it.

> Removing OtherOS from existing PS3s didn't save Sony a single penny.

Incorrect. It saved Sony a packet. They dramatically reduced the number of possible configurations they had to test for when rolling out new code. That's a substantial saving[1].

> the update was optional

Not that optional. You had the choice of losing OtherOS functionality, or losing much of the gaming capabilities of the unit. That's Hobson's choice; giving someone the choice between losing his fingers or losing his toes doesn't mean that he volunteered to have his digits cut off.

Vic.

[1] As a former Sony employee, I can attest to the huge amount of politics and management bullshit that goes on around software releases. Dropping some code makes a big difference to the bottom line.

Too late...

> Sony can claim tons of money from US and EU because the console is also a computer?!

They already did.

Sony originally described the PS3 as a computer, rather than a games console, to get a lower import duty. It is generally believed - although not proven, of course - that OtherOS was simply a tax dodge.

As Sony are now claiming that OtherOS was never a core part of the machine's operation, we have to wonder whether the EU and the US will suddenly start claiming unpaid import duty from Sony...

Vic.

Intellectual "property"...

> I believe the "protect our intellectual property" bit

You shouldn't. It's bullshit.

The PS3 keys are out there. They have been released. Even if Hotz has pulled his web page, there are a bazillion copies and mirrors in obscure places around the world. Sony simply cannot regain control by this method.

Interestingly, a huge number of people would never have bothered getting involved had SCEA not pulled such amoral legal stunts to try to suppress the information.

Vic.

Microsoft promises not-quite-as-much Street View

Bad idea...

> who could then integrate it and/or licence it on

Were that to happen, there's a strong likelihood that it would no longer be available at no cost - after all, any licencee is likely to have to pay for that licence, and they're going to want to recoup that cost.

The upshot is that we, as consumers, will end up paying money to retain the service, and that money will end up in the pocket of some pol's buddy.

> Before folks start claiming this would be 'Blackmail

It's worse than blackmail, it's the appropriation by the State of a company's property. That tends to set very dangerous precedents - and means companies simply stop coming to Britain. That's not good for trade...

> But this would require gonads our Government and Civil Servants don't have

No, it would require powers they don't have. Preventing Google from operating in Britain would be a very difficult thing to achieve, and one which, ultimately, is unlikely to be good for the population.

Vic.

To what end?

> stickers that say, "I DO NOT OPT IN TO STREETSIDE"

What would that achieve?

Neither Microsoft nor Google require your permission to publish their own photos, even if the subject matter is the street you live in.

Any attempt to change the law to make it otherwise would have a devastating effect on things like investigative journalism.

Vic.

US lawyer's email not creative enough for copyright protection

"Their dubiousness aside"

That's Judge-speak for "you lying twat".

Well done, that man :-)

Vic.

CPS: We won't prosecute over BT/Phorm secret trials

Errr...

> Interestingly the judge also noted the distinction between

> Innocent (which means they did not commit a crime), and

> not guilty (which means they may have committed the crime).

I doubt he said that, exactly, as that would open the door up to a mistrial.

A verdict of "not guilty" is identical to "innocent". The defendant is free to leave without a stain on his character. I rather like Scottish Law option of "not proven", but we don't have that down here.

If the judge said anything, he almost certainly pointed out to the jury that a verdict of "guilty" is only available if the prosecution has proven the case, and that a case insufficiently proven must be returned as "not guilty", even if the jury suspect that defendant committed the crime.

Vic.

Re: Home Office

> I suspect it was the Home Office advice saying it was OK

But the Home Office *didn't* say it was OK. They said it *would* be OK if they sought and received permission from those subjected to their spyware.

BT did not seek permission. Thus, the HO advice does not apply because it was completely conditional on something that did not happen.

Vic.

Re: Advice

> Probably the CPS are unwilling to proceed because they'll lose.

Why so?

BT do *not* have advice from a QC saying that their actions were permissible; they have one saying that consent is required (which consent they did not even try to obtain).

So the CPS would appear to have a case against BT for a clear breach of RIPA2000, and all BT have in defence is some advice saying that the way to make it legal is to obtain consent first, but they didn't do so.

Sounds like an easy win to me...

> That loss could then render RIPA unworkable and we're left with no usable legislation in place.

Aside from that really not being the end of the world, I think you over-estimate what advice BT were actually given...

Vic.

Probably not the same thing.

> You should be a 404 not found back

Actually, you should get a "domain not found" error.

They're almost certainly intercepting your DNS lookups, and substituting their own spam page for stuff that's not found. Virgin do the same. They also provide somewhat fragile DNS systems, so you can sometimes get this even when the domain is live and working.

My advice would be to get yourself a different DNS service. I run my own, but if you don't want to do that, there are plenty of servers available at zero cost. But if you choose OpenDNS, they default to exactly the same behaviour, and you'll have to turn it off manually.

Vic.

Bah.

> only the Director of Public Prosecutions can grant permission

Isn't that just the very definition of corruption?

All legal recourse is completely prevented because the DPP says so.

Vic.

There is no defence...

> Surely there is already some precedence against this.

Plenty.

But what the CPS have said is that they currently deem the act of obtaining advice as a defence against anything that takes their fancy, Whether such advice needs to be accompanied by a sufficient number of stuffed brown envelopes sent to the CPS is left as an exercise for the reader.

So BT apparently took some advice. It can't have been very good advice - allow me to quote from the top of the very first page of RIPA2000 :-

<quote>

1 Unlawful interception

(1)It shall be an offence for a person intentionally and without lawful authority to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its transmission by means of—

(a)a public postal service; or

(b)a public telecommunication system.

</quote>

That pretty much wraps it up...

The next time I'm in trouble, I shall merely tell Mr. Plod that I took some advice from SomeBloke, to be found in his general haunt of ThePub, and he categorically told me it was fine and dandy to help myself to this 'ere Aston. According to the CPS, this is now valid :-(

Vic.

Arse-backwards

> if the government hadn't told either company that what they were doing was legal

If the government truly *did* say that it was legal, then that's a decent defence in court. But, given how blatantly illegal the action, it's something for a court to try, not for the CPS to filter.

It appears that the CPS are interpreting "not in the public interest" as "embarrassing to a few politicians". Again.

Vic.

What is the point?

...Of the CPS?

It's up to a court to decide whether mitigating circumstances warrant a guilty defendant being discharged. The CPS' task is to prosecute those lawbreakers where they believe they can make a case.

If the CPS can't make a case against a criminal who has already admitted a crime, they are clearly not fit for purpose.

This whole thing smells really, really bad, but it'll probably just go down as yet another example of "Can't Prosecute Shit".

If there is no public interest in the prosecution of someone who has clearly, gratuitously, and repeatedly broken RIPA2000, then it is clear that the law in question is itself not in the public interest, and should be repealed.

Twats, the lot of 'em.

Vic.

Binary dinosaur drive found alive and breathing fire

Old Odds & Sods

My Dragon 32 and my Jupiter Ace both still work fine.

I've got a couple of Acorn Electrons in the loft, but I've no idea if they work.

My ELF II failed miserably, and my TRS-80 and UK101 both got lost somewhere along the line :-(

Vic.

UK mobile punters get swift network switcheroo ability

A neat trick...

> Any ideas on how I could wind them up this time?

You say "hang on a sec - just need to get my recording running <click>. Right, for the benefit of the recording, it is now $time on $date, and I am speaking to... sorry, I missed your name"

If they ring you on a VoIP line, it's a pretty simple job to make the recording actually happen, too :-)

Vic.

NoTW offers apologies, 'regret' over phone hacks

The hacks will get off.

They're bound to have asked someone if what they were doing was OK. Not Andy Coulson, I'm sure, but someone.

That someone will have said something along the lines of "yeah, sure, knock yerself out".

So as they sought advice as to the legality of their actions beforehand, a prosecution is not in the public interest, and the CPS will refuse to prosecute. The twats.

Vic.

[Yes, I am seething about the CPS' idiocy today]

e-Borders snares 2,800 possible crims, 5 tons of baccy

@ravenviz

> Sure

I notice that you haven't actually *supplied* any data. Whassamatter? Not quite so keen to see privacy invaded when it's your own?

> but I don't know of what use it be to you unless you wanted to break the law

It doesn't matter what use it will be to anyone else. If you're not "a crim", you won't notice the intrusion. That was your point, was it not?

Vic.

As usual, the spin is spinning...

> Over 18+27+29+25=99 crimes

We don't even know it's that many.

We had 27 rapes, 29 sex offences. So the rapes, being sex offences, might well be a subset of those. We had 25 violent crimes - rape is usually violent. The 27 rapes, 29 sex offences, and 25 violent crimes could even have been the same 29 offences.

But if they'd claimed to have spent loads of dosh and intruded into the privacy of 126 million people for just 47 convictions, questions might have been asked.

Half a tonne of weed and 5 tonnes of baccy - that doesn't strike me as a whole lot...

Vic.

Commodore USA prices up revived C64, VICs

Why?

I'm as nostalgic as the next man, but what is the point of these? That's not a rhetorical question, either; I really can't see it.

The C64 looks like the old machine, of course - but it isn't one. I suspect the novelty will wear off very quickly.

Ans as for the VIC flavours - they're nothing like the VIC-20[1].

Vic.

[1] Hateful machine that that was[2]. 23 character lines? Pah.

[2] Everyone assumed I wanted one at the time. The fact that I didn't buy one should have given something away...

Dig deep! Radio asks taxpayers for blank cheque

I feel dirty now :-(

> [M]urdoch backs things that tend to win

It disturbs me to say anything in support of that man, but this almost certainly needs saying.

The reason that Murdoch wins so often is that he takes a different tack to most modern management.

The current trend is to be *extremely* reactive to what is going on. If a project doesn't show a return in n months, it gets canned.

Murdoch takes a very much longer view. His original Sky anaolgue satellite network was a money sink for *years*, and the rest of the industry scoffed at him. He won, because the long view was so very profitable.

When he set up Sky Digital, once again he poured money into an open sewer for years, and once again the industry scoffed at him. He won.

More companies would be as successful as Murdoch's companies if they weren't so infested with short-termist management.

Vic.

Internet Radio

> Internet Radio is the future...

Of course, the way to kill many birds with one stone would be to set up IPv6 transmitters along the road.

Multicast[1] the content over UDP, and you don't even need the player devices to transmit anything back.

So you get Internet radio availability, IPv6 rollout, and multicast all rolled into one Govt. push.

Change of codec coming up? Just open up another multicast address. IPv6 isn't exactly short of them.

Vic.

[1] technically, it would be more akin to broadcast, but that has a specific meaning in IP.

Not going to happen...

> typing in a subdomain/URL to access a stream directly would be ideal.

Pretty much all Internet streams can already be accessed in such a fashion. But the broadcasters frequently hide those URLs in the baggage they insist you use (Wireshark help here :-)

> Could use DNS SRV/TXT records to expose a list of stations available at a particular

> (sub)domain

But the broadcasters don't *want* you to get that info. Then you'd be able simply to tune in and listen, rather than clicking through a couple of pages of advertising before you get your stream...

> instead I'm stuck with stupid BBC stupid iPlayer stupid Flash stupid plugin

get_iplayer is your friend.

Vic.

Not quite...

> DVB-T ("Freeview") won't work well in a moving vehicle due to doppler shift and other effects.

Doppler shift won't worry it.

The difficulty you have is that you need a signal. This means getting yourself a reasonably-sized TV aerial, and pointing it at the transmitter (since they are directional).

That doesn't work too well on a car...

Vic.

Nokia admits 'open' Symbian is not open

Cocks

There is no other word for these people.

Vic.

It's the oldest working Seagate drive in the UK

Bus Speed

> So if this is the case, why do they keep increasing the bus speed?

Because that raises the rate at which you can burst data to the disk (for it to be cached in RAM).

This allows the CPU to go off and do other things while the HDD processor gets on with writing all that cached data to the platters.

As long as the mean bus data rate (averaged over the amount of time it takes to fill the cache) doesn't exceed the platter transfer rate, you're left with a disk subsystem that appears to write data at full bus speed - even though it's actually doing no such thing.

If the mean bus data rate goes too high, you end up with the CPU in IOWait until the drive catches up.

Vic.

Anonymous hacks Sony PS3 sites

Absence of fertiliser...

> The "Oh, I just want to run custom software for reason XYZ" argument is a bunch of horse shit

It isn't.

I don't own a PS3. I had planned to buy a couple, specifically for the purpose of experimenting with the architecture. I'm rubbish at games, so I'd probably not have bought any.

Luckily for me, Sony blew away my plans *before* I'd spent any money.

Vic.

Defrauded?

> But hackers were directly or indirectly defrauding Sony by circumventing copy protection

There's nothing to show that anyone defrauded anyone else of anything[1].

It's an allegation that Sony have made to support their need to force Geohot to travel right across the country to defend himself. They haven't proven it.

They almost certainly won't prove it, either, since most of the work of breaking the copyright protection happened when Sony themselves released most of the private key.

Someone appears not to realise that every bit of a key you release halves the task of breaking the rest...

Vic.

[1] Unless you consider Sony's removal of a key selling point to be fraud, of course. The class action does...

I really wish they wouldn't do this.

I couldn't care less whether the Sony sites are up or down - but by taking this sort of action, Anonymous have turned Sony into the victim.

They'll play on that. They'll use it to garner sympathy. This will help their court action. They now have an "ooh look at the nasty hacktivists" story to tell the Judge, and they'll use that to back up their assertions that there is a criminal conspiracy behind Geohot's actions.

Anonymous really haven't helped here.

Vic.

Watchdog backs Top Gear in war with Mexico

Re: Good decision

> the Mexican piece was so contrived and vitriolic

It was exceptionally poor writing.

Nothing to get worked up about, though, unless you were the one paying the script writers...

Vic.

re: International image

> Now they think we are just a bunch of boorish tossers

Pretty accurate, then, in the main...

Look around you. Most of the people you meet in the street are not the reincarnation of Wilde...

Vic.

Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

I can't work like that.

> One of each

That's no good to me. I want data onscreen, not hidden every time I change my context slightly.

I currently have 17 Firefox windows open over 4 workspaces. On this machine...

> Each one has a shit ton of *tabs*, though.

As do mine.

> All web browser and terminal apps I've ever seen have a 'New Window' entry in the File menu.

That's fine. I still want a new window when I select one, though.

> Which does what you actually want

I can select "new window" from inside Firefox, or I can press the Firefox button. Both do the same thing. Both do exactly what I want.

But in the event that an application doesn't do it the way I really want - yes, if I've selected another instance, I bloody well want it to create one. My computers are here to do my bidding, not try to tell me what I actually wanted.

Vic.

Some of us change hardware only when necessary...

> I think nowadays there aren't many computers that *can't* handle compiz

I have quite a few that don't. They're powerful enough to do the tasks I throw at them - why would I want to discard[1] working machines just to get some dodgy effects I don't want?

Vic.

[1] I have numerous laptops in this condition, so "change the graphics card" isn't really an option...

60%?

> Now about 60% of Linux uses on on Ubuntu.

Where did you get that statistic?

Most of the server farms I see don't use Ubuntu...

Vic.

Multiple instances...

[Of opening multiple instances of an application]

> it's unusual, rarely necessary, and often accidentally invoked

Really?

How many browser windows are you currently runnig? How many terminals?

Vic.

Attack hijacks sensitive data using newer Windows features

This is new...

> by inserting a rogue piece of hardware

...Or a rogue piece of software.

> Assuming ipv6 is turned on

It is, by default.

> Assuming the application your hijacking is ipv6 aware

No - that happens in the network stack. The application may neither know nor care that its transport is IPv6.

> Assuming you can create ipv6 dns records

If you're hijacking traffic, you can.

> All this does is further impede the progress of ipv6 and spread fud

Not entirely. There's a real story here, even if it's a problem that's quite easily solved.

Vic.

You missed the point...

> if somebody physically broke in and added custom hardware

It doesn't need custom hardware - just something that acts as a router.

That's a piece of software. It could easily be a piece of malware.

Vic.

Net boffins plot password alternatives

Total crap.

They're advocating splitting a "secure" password into two bits, leaving one (a weak password) with the user, and presenting the rest as a captcha.

That's nonsense. You still have a weak password, and a token that is sent back to the user in the clear. They are relying on the strength of the captcha algorithm to be hard enough to frustrate automatic decoding, but esay enough to be usable by humans.

In other words, this is simply a (weak) password and a captcha.

Captchas are trivially defeated by a tiny bit of scripting and a reasonable stash of pornography.

So this system boils down to - a weak password.

There are a number of things one could do to make passwords more useful. This isn't one of them.

Vic.

Google's 'clean' Linux headers: Are they really that dirty?

Patents are often silly, copyrights aren't.

Without copyright, anyone can claim ownership to any creative output you might make. Your investment, their profit.

That sorta kills creative output.

The length of copyright protection, on the other hand, has become a joke. You might have written a neat little ditty in the '60s, but that doesn't mean your descendants should be living off it for all time.

Vic.

Nope.

> That should bollocks up a lot of so called software patents.

It will have no effect whatsoever on software patents.

Vic.