Re: God luck hacking my wagon...
"I will raise you an ANPRC 10 for your A41 ;)"
LOL! Already have a UK/PRC-320 thanks ;-)
Posts by Roger Stenning
338 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2008
Five Totally Believable Things Car Makers Must Do To Thwart Hackers
Thursday 14th August 2014 14:29 GMT
Re: God luck hacking my wagon...
"A squaddie can roll anything... as evidenced by the many photos on this page (scroll down for the better ones):
http://www.nmbva.co.uk/REME%20photos.htm"
Yeah, in the days of national service, those were. I've seen some rather more spectacularly messy ones myself, though not, thankfully, with Landies.
Thursday 14th August 2014 14:28 GMT
Re: God luck hacking my wagon...
"Hmmmm, heard on a military comms net many moons ago "Rolled the rover over, over". These damn things flip at a moments notice in my experience."
As I mentioned earlier, Land Rovers are no more unstable than any other MTV. If you allow stupidity to overcome common sense and training then yes, you can do terminally stupid things to gain a Darwin Award for yourself. The trick to keeping yourself and your vehicle in single pieces is to maintain proper control of the vehicle, drive within your limits, and also within the limits of the place where you are driving, as it is, indeed, with any other form of motorised transport.
Oh, and I've heard that one on the batphone too ;-)
Thursday 14th August 2014 10:51 GMT
Re: God luck hacking my wagon...
Yes, the panels are aly, but I think you must be thinking of the range rover. Series landies have a pronounced steel welded chassis, and are no more unstable than any other MTV on the roads. As a result of their height off the deck compared to the majority of other cars on the road, other cars are more likely to hit the chassis than the bodywork, and thus come off worst. As to the suspension on a series wagon, they have a rather hard suspension through the use of leaf springs, hence the so-called 'land rover backside' after a long drive ;-)
Hmm. Reliant Robin. Painted yellow, I trust? ;-)
NASA tests crazytech flying saucer thruster, could reach Mars in days
Monday 4th August 2014 20:22 GMT 
Even accounting...
...for the fact that conventional rocketry would be needed to bring it to orbit, this is quite something. I hope the scaled-up version exceeds the promise of the model they constructed.
I can only see one potential problem: It's using microwave energy to produce thrust. If that casing leaks (micrometeorites etcetera), everyone on board the ship it's pushing is likely to wind up as rubber chicken, unless there are some significant Faraday cage considerations given to the crew compartment.
Never the less, let's hope this works - I want to see us establish a permanent, fully manned, and expanding, facility on Mars before I pop my clogs!
EE rolls out London bus pay-by-bonk app – only fandoids need apply
'We screwed up' sighs Sony bigwig after gaming portals collapse in DNS cock-up riddle
Watch: DARPA shows off first successful test of STEERABLE bullet
Teensy card skimmers found in gullets of ATMs
Wednesday 9th July 2014 04:04 GMT 
It might actually help...
...if they post those photos on publicly viewable, rather than subscription-only, sites: Prevention is better than cure, and it'd be useful for us unwashed masses to know just WTF we're looking for, when trying to prevent ourselves from being fleeced by these feckless buggers, after all.
FAKE Google web SSL certificates tip-toe out from Indian authorities
Judge says there's no such thing as a 'Patent Troll'
UK govt preps World War 2 energy rationing to keep the lights on
UK govt 'tearing up road laws' for Google's self-driving cars: The truth
Monday 9th June 2014 12:29 GMT 
I'm against it at this time. here's why...
The road traffic conditions here are vastly different to those in the USA; our roads are generally more congested, the driving standards are variable at best, and frankly, I - and I suspect many others - don't trust the level of reliability on the highly complex electronic, mechanical, and computing solutions that would be required for the extremely active and reactive systems that would have to be 100% reliable fully automated travel on our roads.
In addition (and Suricou Raven, we were typing at the same time, looks like, you beat me to this just now!), there's the legislation and litigation angle to consider: There has to be a human to take responsibility for the movement of a vehicle in a court of law should something go irreversibly wrong; vehicle-related deaths, injuries, and such like, can generally be taken to have been caused by a Human, not a machine - indeed, the percentage of Road Traffic Collisions caused by purely mechanical failure are remarkably small these days; taking the human out of the loop means that should a computer or technological error creep in, human responsibility may not properly be apportionable; thus without a Human in the control loop, any prosecution resulting from a smart-system-related RTC may be immediately doomed to failure.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for technological advances, but you have to consider that even unmanned aerial vehicles have humans in the control loop; if they require a human on the controls, then surely road-going vehicles require this as well?
EBay, you keep using the word 'SECURITY'. I do not think it means what you think it means
Thursday 22nd May 2014 02:24 GMT 
After the horse has bolted...
...been recaptured, stuck in the next door cell in the sables, and the door roped closed without even so much as a new Abloy padlock...
...I pre-emptively changed my password. No email to tell me to, of course. Heard about it on the radio, of all things. Oh, and YE FESTERING AND SUFFERING GODS they took HOW FRAKKING LONG to tell us about this TARFU?!
And to those who bemoan their fiends - I mean friends - and mutants - I mean relations - not having a ruddy clue what to use for a password, tell 'em to get their passwords from here... http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/. Seems to have worked with those who hitherto didn't know what I meant, and couldn't understand how I explained it - thus, there is no longer any excuse NOT to know how to generate a strong password.
Remembering it afterwards, of course, is another matter altogether...!
FINGERS CROSSED: Apple and Samsung said to be hammering out settlement
Monday 19th May 2014 20:03 GMT 
It's the commercial version of...
..the Cold War. It'll be Brush Fire (litigation) battles all over the globe, until one of them falls over into bankruptcy, and the world suffers the fallout.
Still, the longer it takes, maybe the milder the overall effects may be.
All hail the Silicon Curtain!
OK, sod it, reaching for my coat already ;-)
FCC mulls two-speed internet, axing net neutrality ... unless you convince it otherwise
GCHQ's 'NOSEY SMURF' spyware snoops dragged into secretive tribunal
Wednesday 14th May 2014 13:50 GMT
It'll be found to be legal if...
...someone actually asked for a warrant - which in this case does NOT need to be signed by a magistrate or judge, the Secretary of State (or an authorised 'senior official' under his express authority) may issue such warrants.
See the Sections 5 & 6, Intelligence Services Act 1994 (1994 c. 13), "Authorisation of certain actions"
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/13/crossheading/authorisation-of-certain-actions
In short, the tribunal is unlikely to find in favour of Privacy International.
What, you were expecting a fairy tale ending for the small guy? Welcome to reality, feller.
eBay cops $3bn tax bill after moving its profits back onshore
Wednesday 30th April 2014 18:24 GMT 
Wot, no comments...
...on how they actually PAID some tax this time?
Wow.
I'd have thought congratulations were in order for a large multinational corp actually contributing to society for a change by paying tax - even if they did do it in the USA, rather than over here in Blighty.
Now, can more of them follow suit, but over here, please?
Firefox, is that you? Version 29 looks rather like a certain shiny rival
Reg probe bombshell: How we HACKED mobile voicemail without a PIN
Windows 8.1 Update: Throws desktop drones a bone but still as TOUCHY as ever
Wednesday 9th April 2014 13:26 GMT 
Touchscreen is fine and dandy...
... for a mobile device like a PDA, mobile (Cellular) phone, and phablets, but NOT, say again NOT for a desktop machine, where keyboard shortcuts, F keys, etcetera are often in regular usage; the Win8 environment is just not keyed up (sorry, couldn't help it) for this at all.
I appreciate that they wanted to keep it effectively to something like "one system to rule them all", but in the real world that's just not going to happen. Two versions, minimum, was what they should have aimed at; Mobile and desktop.
The end result: They've pissed off a fair slice of their formerly loyal following.
My new notebook came with In8 as standard. It took some modding (OK, a quick search and a simple download and installation of IOBit's "Start menu 8") to add the functionality of the windows key and start bar (3rd party application), but I've got it to where it's usable.
But the next upgrade I have in hardware WILL be for a Linux machine, and the hell with Windoze.
'Graceful' solar flare erupts from surface of Sun – NASA vid
Google teases more modular smartphone details in run-up to dev meet-up
Bank-raid ZeuS malware waltzes around web with 'valid app signature'
Judge strikes down Apple attempt to bar Samsung's 'untrue' patent comments
Saturday 5th April 2014 02:24 GMT
Will someone *please*...
..just bang their damned heads together and yell so that their ears reside six feet inside their skulls "PLAY THE FUCK NICE"?
I'm getting so fucking tired of this crap is almost makes me want to dump them all - no matter who the hell they are - into a sodding blast furnace, and turn the dial up to "vapourise with intent".
Get ready for software-defined RADAR: Jam, eavesdrop, talk and target ... simultaneously
Thursday 3rd April 2014 01:51 GMT
Re: Interesting...
Frankly, yes, that IS a problem; in an aircraft capable of supersonic flight, any opening to the ambient supersonic air has the potential to rip the fuselage wide open due to the forces involved. Yes, you could potentially bleed air into a cooling vent via a secondary intake from within the air intakes for the engines prior to the air entering the turbine blades, but then the problem becomes one of slowing this resulting air down to manageable velocities to be useful in any cooling system. A friend of mine worked for many years as an avionics technician (and later as a team leader) in the RAF for many years, and I'm reliably informed that this is a very real problem.
Wednesday 2nd April 2014 11:28 GMT 
Interesting...
..but I can't help but wonder how much of a service life (mean time between failure) such kit would have; given the multitude of activities that the equipment would have to be servicing, the duty cycle of all components in the kit would have to be near 100% when switched on and operational; that would require some serious over-engineering to take into account the heat build-up that this would generate. On ground-based kit, that wouldn't be so much of a problem, as fans, cooling systems, et al, don't have to be that small in that location - but in a small place like a military combat aircraft? That's going to be a challenge to overcome.
Bletchley boffins go to battle again: You said WHAT about Colossus?
AT&T and Netflix get into very public spat over net neutrality
Saturday 22nd March 2014 01:17 GMT
"Someone must pay a cost".
Hmm. I could have sworn that some folks already do pay a cost.
Oh yeah! They're called "customers".
Maybe you should think about providing them a little better service for the money they give you, instead of squeezing them for everything they've got without improving anything?
Just saying.
MPs urge UK.gov to use 1950s obscenity law to stifle online stiffies
Mozilla takes Windows 8-friendly Firefox out back ... two shots heard
Backdoor snoops can access files on your Samsung phone via the cell network – claim
Thursday 13th March 2014 03:18 GMT
Am I being cynical...
...or does Replicant, screaming "SECURITY HOLE! (you can avoid it with OUR operating system)" just sound a little bit like sensationalist panic-driving advertising?
Reference (para 10): "The solution, Kocialkowski says, is to replace the device's stock Android firmware with a purely free-software OS, such as Replicant."
Meh. Because, well.
Twittapocalypse! Twitter implodes, locked out tweeps around the world
Heroic Playmonaut wowed by LOHAN's bulging package
Hey, MoJ, we're not your Buddi: Brit firm abandons 'frustrating' crim-tagging contract
Thursday 6th March 2014 15:34 GMT
Yes, but the crux point here is that the MoJ did NOT appear to want to pay for the development costs in the NEW specification of the contract.
Looking at the whole article (I *DID* RTFA!), it seems that the MoJ wanted not to amend the terms of the existing contract, but to have Buddi agree to what would amount to a completely new contract to develop tech that the MoJ wanted, that would pay Buddi exactly the same as the old contract, AND at the end of the contract period lose them all the IP involved in developing the new technology that the MoJ wouldn't then be paying for.
That is, if not illegal, certainly immoral. You do NOT expect people to work for nothing, after all.
I can see why Buddi threw their toys out of the pram. Entirely reasonable response, IMHO.
Passenger jet grounded by two-hour insect attack
NHS England DIDN'T tell households about GP medical data grab plan
Scotland to test mobe signals slammer jammer
Wednesday 12th February 2014 15:23 GMT 
It's a good idea, but...
...the laws of physics being what they are, there's no way that they can assure us that any jamming signal they broadcast will remain within the walls of the clink in question.
There will inevitably be leakage, and people who are merely walking or driving past any nick using this system in a built up area (can you say Brixton, Holloway, or even Wormwood Scrubs, just to name a few in London) will be affected by this system - this is especially worrying, as any of those people may be calling the emergency services for some reason when they get hit by the leaked jamming signal.
Any cellular jamming system used therefore, must be installed in a building that can be completely shielded (Faraday Cage, as mentioned above) so as to prevent such leakage. And for a prison, the costs are just too prohibitive to retrofit each building with such a cage.
There has to be something done, obviously, but a blanket jamming signal is NOT the way to do it.
Angry anti-NSA hackers pwn Angry Birds site after GCHQ data slurp
Elderly Bletchley Park volunteer sacked for showing Colossus exhibit to visitors
A real life Romulan-Klingon alliance: Google, Samsung sign global patent pact
Alcatel-Lucent and BT unveil super fat pipe, splurt out 1.4Tb per second across London
Thursday 23rd January 2014 20:36 GMT
So, realistically...
...we're talking three times the throughput at the termination point (the customer), without any expensive and long-term road and pavement works to replace cabling and roadside boxes?
My only niggle is wondering how long it'll take the relevant parties to roll this out into the real world.
Still, when all's said and done, it's nothing to be sniffed at, when you think about it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
