Posts by Pascal Monett 18239 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
They didn't actually find the guy who coordinated the DDOS attacks. They investigated a guy who was stupid enough to shout on the rooftops that he was coordinating the attacks, and found him to be guilty.
So, if he'd shut up about it, what's the chance he would have been found ?
That's what I wonder.
Cheap means that all corners were cut, minimal quality assurance was done and the only thing they might have checked before shipping is that the thing can actually start.
So yes, people should be wary of cheap electronics that can connect to the Internet. By paying a proper price, you can at least go back to the store and raise an almighty stink on some poor sales schlub if the kit you buy is malware-ridden.
Did they at least ask you for the existing sim card before giving you a new one ?
Because if they did, then it's rather okay since you are replacing an existing item with an identical one in a different size. They don't really need to know who you are, the sim card is an appropriate passkey.
But if they didn't even need that, then yes, one wonders exactly what the word "security" means today if one can go to a store and ask for a sim card for any phone number with a blanket excuse like size.
If it writes to system files and is not a core Windows process, then why let it do that ?
If it's an image and it attempts to execute code, why let it ?
Okay, it's easy to find simple examples. Real life is exponentially more difficult and I'm certainly not a virus expert. But all this signature-based detection is demonstrably insufficient.
I wish these guys the best of luck. We can certainly do with a new approach to the question.
But I'm not worried : I KNOW it isn't secure.
Which is why I'll be damned before I connect anything to the Internet that hasn't been demonstrated as secure before I buy it. And that's just a fancy way of saying never, because IoT will not be demonstrably secure in the foreseeable future.
Thank you for confirming that blackmail should never, ever be rewarded.
DDOS attacks are possible because there is still an impressive amount of computers on line that are not adequately protected and have been owned by this scum. Secure the computers and this attack vector will disappear entirely.
Of course, that means that millions of people who haven't got a clue will need to go and check their computers. Not much of a chance for that to happen any time soon.
Indeed, it is a positive start. The idea of a trustee protecting the data is genius in its simplicity.
The trustee does, however, need to be totally independent from any US influence to be efficient. And it needs to remain untouched by any insider corruption - such as NSA agents infiltrating themselves in the trustee's organization.
So great idea, but expanding the issue to ensure data protection from everyone for everyone is going to be one hell of a headache.
Essentially it seems that they are not checking the app security, just checking that it is not doing something they don't want it to do (like replicate functionality they have in an "official" app, eh Apple ?) or doing something they'd be interested in copying for themselves.
If they find neither of these situations, then it's a cursory malware scan and on to the store.
So the value of this attack method depends on sysadmins not keeping their servers up to date. Well if it still takes more than half an hour to get a valid token I think this attack is not all that dangerous.
Of course, between sysadmins not doing their job and people spending hours on Facebook, maybe there is a danger, but this is really something only the sysadmins can do anything about.
On the other hand, if that is how your session gets cracked, you know who to blame.
Oh I'm sure somebody has thought of it, but the road to video streaming is stuffed to the gills with stumbling blocks, slippery stones and every outright trap that the entities called "content owners" can dream up.
The name content owner is appropriate, you see, because they own that content and they prefer being sodomized with a rusty tube before giving anyone a chance of viewing their content without them taxing every second of the experience, even when said content dates back to the early half of last century.
Not the point, actually.
The point is : which society do you want to live in, the nanny state where what you can do is not decided by you and you are controlled 24/7 to ensure compliance, or the place where you are free to do as you wish and will take responsibility for your actions if you harm someone ?
I believe the latter is a more adult kind of society. Maybe that is why we have been regressing in the past half-century ; too many gutless wonders having their say and you end up without freedom nor the right to demand any.
but not explaining clearly what happened, making contradictory statements on what happened, fudging the dates on when it happened, not publishing a clear timeline and, worse, having the timeline contradict documented reality apparently don't help.
TalkTalk apparently believes that it doesn't matter that everything they have published is a matter of traceable public record, they can just go ahead and retconn reality by publishing any PR spiel they please.
Well apparently customers don't like that, (more importantly) investors don't like that and Joe Public thinks "What the hell are they smoking in that company ?".
That attitude does lower share prices.
Come now, people, we should know how to read between the lines by now. What they actually said is that they are committed to being as open and transparent as they feel like. Which is exactly how ICANN has behaved since the beginning.
While secretly laughing at all of us behind closed doors (and tables laden with coke and strippers).
Directly from Unicorn Land, where everyone has money to burn and nothing can ever go wrong.
I salute M. Andreeson on one point : at least he is honest enought to clue us in on the true basis of his evaluation by using the terms Unicorns and Angels. Given that nobody has seen either, it is clear that he is spouting bull and just hoping to take in a maximum number of suckers before his latest bet falls on its face.
Andreeson is not a VC, he is a scammer, and you're the bait.
Although that couldn't hurt.
What she really needs is a major culling of her activity on Facebook. And the realization that posting your life willy-nilly for all to see does nobody any good.
Well, in this case, almost nobody.
In any case,it's an expensive lesson. I hope she won't need another.
Well that settles that then.
On the previous article on this subject, there was argument over this sentence :
The asteroid will come within 498,896 kilometers of Earth
Some people deemed the number suspiciously exact and thus called NASA's results into question. Well I think we can all agree that NASA wasn't so wrong after all.
If the average usage of the service is 5GB, then the 70+ TB users are a rounding error in the statistics and not cause for panic. With the number of users OneDrive is supposed to have, the few users who are uploading vast quantities of data will be lost in the sea of small updates by millions of people. If you can't handle a dozen heavy users of your service, you haven't a snowballs' proverbial of handling millions of concurrent connections.
I think that the heavy users were brought up as a smokescreen to generate understanding in favor of Microsoft. Why the timing of this eludes me, but it is far less important than the all the justified backlash going on. The marketroid who thought this up is going to have a hard time pitching for a salary raise come December.
Oh well, just another bullet in the foot for Microsoft. Foot must be made of lead by now.
Yeah, that tweaked my funny bone as well.
This presentation was undoubtedly for the Fortune 1000 crowd who are looking at what their privacy-slurping datacenters will be in ten years.
For the rest of the business world, tape storage is cheap, reliable and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to put in place.
Good question.
I purchased and installed a NAS from Synology and put in 4 3TB drives in RAID 5 configuration. That gave me a total of 8.5TB of useful storage. Of that space, I have used less than 4TB ripping my 450+ DVD collection and other assorted data files.
Even if I went back to upload every single one of my 150+ DVD backups, along with my new collection of 47 BR optical backups, I still couldn't fill up my NAS.
Still, I'm happy with the knowledge that I can replace all my 3TB drives with up to 8TB ones. I just don't have the slightest idea when and how I will need to get that much space.
Well, we'll see if the board is still happy after the customers leave in droves.
If customers are unhappy enough - and have an alternative available - to do so.
If that is not possible, there just might be enough people to mount a class-action lawsuit - although I don't know the status of that kind of legal action in the UK. If it is possible though, then it will hurt the board directly.
But reality commands that this is just a minor issue that will be forgotten after XMas holidays. I doubt very much that any number of people will be leaving because of this.
Windows 10 has been designed 'together' with the user fanbois. MS clearly listened and learned from what decided that the user wants the same interface on his phone, tablet and PC and ignored anything that went contrary to that idea. Has implemented borked and rearranged features not based on their cool factor, but on their usability confusion factor.
FTFY
First it was only the small 4-cylinder engine, now bigger 6-cylinder engines are also concerned.
What's to bet that virtually all constructors are doing something like this ? Come on, am I really supposed to believe that VW is the only group that had something to improve their test results ? Especially since we now know that the engine software has to know it's being tested, since the test involves one set of wheels not rolling when power is applied, and that, in normal function, that would apparently be a cutoff situation.
I expect more constructors and engines to be drawn into this issue.
Not really, since VW is under investigation. Whatever is going on will be found, described, ascertained and thoroughly evaluated. Then there will be measures taken. Whether or not they will be useful is another matter.
Snowden was necessary because the NSA was never going to go under any spotlight whatsoever. Even now that we know, the NSA is carefully hiding its activities behind the iron curtain of "national security" and everything it does has been and will be repeatedly described as legal.
That, very much. Going into politics is like entering a monastery : you're going to spend all your time with the same people. If you are completely against everything they do, you are by definition uniting them against you. And they have more experience than you. So your failure is a foregone conclusion.
The only way to change the system is create an overwhelming public movement against it that the monks can simply no longer ignore. Takes time, dedication, mountains of effort and probably not a small amount of cash. The only alternative is to wait for people to wake up, but, save for a miracle, you'll be dead before that happens.
In a Hollywood film, there would be a rallying effort to save the underdog, and by some miracle it would end well.
In real life, however, money is an absolute and an attitude is not enough to get around it, nor does it suffice to encourage someone to invest against the likes of Amazon.
A bleak end to a nice story. Hopefully the employees and management of Ninefold will have gained valuable experience and will be able to market it successfully.
When your stats are based on millions of unique connections, although they may not be perfect, there still can be meaning inferred from them.
In this case, we can argue about exactly how much the slowing is, but apparently, that there is a slowing is not in doubt.
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