Posts by Jordan Davenport

Web host Linode, hackers clash over credit-card raid claim

I didn't cancel my account because of one security mishap...

I canceled my account because they didn't even tell me that there was even a remote possibility that my credit card number, encrypted or not, was leaked. They still haven't announced the breach on their front page or sent an email detailing the full extent of the breach to their users. Furthermore, they shouldn't have made any such deals with the hackers. How can you trust a black hat?

I would've probably stayed with them had they actually alerted me that an encrypted copy of my credit card number might have been obtained in the breach, but their PR downplayed the event as much as possible. Sorry, but a coverup is worse than a breach.

Anons torn over naming 'n' shaming of 17yo's gang-rape suspects

Re: Hmm...

I don't approve of blackmail and have not seen the pictorial evidence, but that said, if pictures of the act in progress were indeed taken and distributed, then I would believe that the pictures should be sufficient to demonstrate guilt.

I do not AT ALL support releasing names for vigilante justice, but obviously the girl is receiving no justice from the proper authorities so far. I feel sorry for the girl and her family. I'm sure the family just wants peace, and blackmailing the police is not going to give them that.

The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME

Re: WHAT!

The PS3 also accepts mouse input quite well (though very few games support it) and supports network printers, even without OtherOS.

Reader slain? 'Even the Google apologists on G+ are p****d off'

Your reasoning is quite flawed. The service may have been free, but it's something that I'm sure many users would pay a nominal fee to use if given the chance. I know I sure would. The problem is that's not even an option.

Google is attempting to shift the world to the cloud, particularly with their Chromebooks where local applications aren't even allowed, and yet they keep killing their cloud services. Supposedly it's an underutilized service. Is that really true? I know I didn't visit reader.google.com itself often at all, but I use Reader on iGoogle and on my Android devices. Even my mother uses it on her tablet to keep up with the local news.

Re: Oh right, it's an RSS reader

Furthermore, if your device that aggregates feeds is offline for several days, a cloud-based service will still work and collect all the feeds for you, even if the source has since dropped the article from the feed. With a local client, your computer must be on and online all the time just to make sure no articles are missed.

AdBlock Plus BLOCKED from Google Play

@AndrueC

AdAway does exactly that and does it automatically. It even allows for whitelists of websites to allow explicitly in your hosts file. It used to be on the Play Store, but it's open source and still available from Google Code for the meantime or from their recommended repository F-Droid, a repository of free software (FOSS) for Android.

http://code.google.com/p/ad-away/ <- AdAway's homepage

http://f-droid.org/ <- F-Droid's homepage

Re: More adverts, everywhere.

I have no problems with simple advertising, but I will never accept Flash ads (on the desktop); HTML5 ads that bounce around, play audio, play video, or otherwise distract me from what I'm trying to do and drain battery life; or ads that take up a significant portion of the display area and hinder my ability to do work. I'm fine with simple text ads like Google's or plain graphics.

At least in Firefox, AdBlock Plus even displays non-intrusive ads by default. Furthermore depending on the lists you download or rules you create, you can block only tracking syndicates, again such as Google, and take an active part in protecting your own privacy. Call me arrogant if you like, but I like being able to determine what information I divulge about myself and to whom I divulge it.

AdBlock Plus itself isn't any more parasitic than a computer or the Internet itself for enabling users to be able to do something. What the user often does with it is what you deem parasitic behavior, but that's not the tool's fault, especially since it does actually try to allow non-intrusive advertising by default. Furthermore, I try to only use services that only use advertising I deem acceptable.

I'm edging away from Skype now because of the intrusive ads Microsoft is starting to push during calls. I'll stop using any service that starts shoving advertising down my throat in the most obnoxious way they can. Meanwhile I'll pick up other publications or opt to receive advertisements from certain companies just to look at the ads.

Outages plague Hotmail and Outlook users

It WAS going to be Friday, but at least in the US, the MSN Messenger switch off has been delayed by another three weeks.

Re: Just try to use a password longer than 15 characters... it won't allow you.

The limit is 16 characters, actually. The password I tried using for my account is 17 characters long. It accepted it when I set it. I just have to truncate it to 16 characters when signing in now.

Pwn2Own: IE10, Firefox, Chrome, Reader, Java hacks land $500k

Re: Surface Pro

'Ummm, he did say "lowest vulnerability counts versus time".'

The problem with that statement is that it relies on the assumption of a linear scale. On the release to manufacturing date, let's be naive nice and assume there are 0 known vulnerabilities in the product. If you rely on that statistic of 0 vulnerabilities over one day, it is therefore the lowest vulnerability count over time.

The problem is that growth in vulnerability discovery is nowhere anywhere remotely near linear, and you need a much larger sample size. Even a full year on the market is too small a sample size to judge vulnerabilities in systems. For example, take a look at Mac OS X. It has historically been promoted as being malware-free, but that's been since thoroughly disproved after several years, even if most (though not all) vulnerabilities have risen from third-party software.

Re: Surface Pro

You're assuming the hack doesn't work in IE9 as well.

Redmond slashing Win8, Office OEM rates for small devices

Re: Hmmm

Shortly before Christmas, I set up a laptop a friend got for her ~10-year-old daughter. The mother wanted it to be ready for her out of the box so she didn't have to configure it, aside from adding a few personal accounts. The OEM had included several Windows Store apps that weren't their own, but I found absolutely no way to install other things she would use without tying it to a Microsoft account. I tried a few Google searches but found nothing relevant.

It's not as if I wanted to pirate anything - the apps were all freeware. I just wanted to pre-install the Windows Store version of Skype, the Amazon Kindle application to complement her Kindle Fire, a few game demos, the freeware Microsoft games, and a few other things. Yeah, that didn't happen. I ended up installing the desktop version of Skype and tried to make Metro as easy to use for her as possible, grouping things like Office and removing uninstall links that got dumped to the start screen.

So far, she's not had any troubles with it. It seems kids are more willing to adapt to new things than adults though.

'Million-strong' zombie army devours Raspberry Pi's crunchy base

Re: Oh no you jus dint...

Thanks. You just gave me the idea to set up busybox on one of my Pi SD cards instead.

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

Re: Good riddance to old trash...

Oh, and...

"I wouldn't be surprised if he has some commercial reason to provide such an inaccurate picture of Linux and Apple."

Yes, he does - he's a Microsoft MVP that now makes his living selling a .NET programming environment for Android, iOS, and Mac OS X.

Re: Good riddance to old trash...

"OS X is using the Linux kernal (albeit a well outdated one) and what looks to me under the hood, to be a complete Linux operating system in every way."

Apple use a fork of the Mach kernel, a microkernel, completely unrelated to the Linux kernel, which is a monolithic kernel. The kernel and components are provided freely as Darwin, and a few Darwin distributions have existed over the years. There's very little to distinguish them from an end user's perspective from a Linux or BSD distribution given they all run X11 and generally require graphical applications to be built on top of it, but they all do use different subsystem components and libraries.

"If I'm not mistaken, Apple have just made their own Window Manager, of which there are already many to choose from for Linux and they have locked it down where possible to prevent the user from being able to change it."

You are. OS X doesn't even natively use X11 for anything, though an optional X11 server called XQuartz is available. Instead it uses its own display server without all the cruft of X11 being pulled along for the ride. The window manager is built on top of their libraries and is not meant to be replaced, just as Windows' window manager is not meant to be replaced either. You probably can, but I'm not certain on that; it would be an ugly mess.

They have also disabled the standard built in package management system and replaced it with their own library of commercial applications, removing still more choice.

There is no single standard package management system for Linux. Each distribution uses its own. Ubuntu uses Debian's dpkg and apt, as do Debian- and Ubuntu-derivatives; Fedora uses RPM and PackageKit, as do a few others; Arch uses pacman; Gentoo uses portage; etc. There are package management systems available for OS X for other utilities if you so desire, such as MacPorts or Homebrew for example.

Apple use a mixture of FreeBSD user land and GNU utilities on top of the Mach kernel, as I mentioned before, along with several in-house additions. They do use several other products from the free software community such as KHTML in the form of Webkit, but not one of them is the Linux kernel, the one and only thing that makes a Linux distribution a Linux distribution. The terminal will of course feel familiar because it's bash, perhaps the most commonly used shell in Linux, but that's GNU. OS X is in some senses a true Unix, whereas Linux is simply Unix-like.

Raspberry Pi-powered Tardis blasts off from 'Blighty's Baikonur'

Except in this case....

"Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style" might be more appropriate.

Microsoft finally ships Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7

Re: So, will this get rid of...

Damn, I forgot about Windows XP Embedded. Its EOL is January 12, 2016, so IE6 will live on until at least then, assuming I've not forgotten yet another esoteric build of Windows that runs IE6 and will be still supported.

Re: So, will this get rid of...

IE6 will be officially damned after July 14, 2015, when the last operating system that runs it (Windows Server 2003) will reach end of life. IE7 will unfortunately probably linger until January 14, 2020 though...

Regarding those demos, yes, most I've tried actually do run under Firefox and Chrome, even in Linux. I haven't tried Opera, Safari 6, or anything else on Mac. HTML5 is an incomplete specification though, so until the W3C signs off on HTML 5.0 next year, nothing that implements HTML5 is actually standards-compliant.

Re: I have XP here so no use

And for the record, I wasn't the one that gave you a down-vote. I see no reason to vote someone down for a sincere question asking for clarification.

Re: I have XP here so no use

Though not all are applicable regarding Windows Vista, try reading these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7

Two quick examples in Windows Explorer itself are the lack of the ability to customize the navigation toolbar in Explorer and the classic one-column start menu. I personally am fine with those two changes, but others aren't. Classic Shell sort of remedies the navigation toolbar and completely remedies the start menu.

All that said, Windows XP only has 14 more Patch Tuesdays in its life. After April 8, 2014, when that zero-day that affects all versions of Windows is discovered, it will never be patched in XP, just like what happened to Windows 2000 in July of 2010.

US insurer punts 'bestiality' to wide-eyed kiddies, gasp 'mums'

Re: "Hollywood studios that put out the likes of Saw?"

As overheard in GameStop...

Employee: "I'm sorry, but we can't sell you this game without a parent's permission. It's rated M for 'mature'."

Prepubescent kid: "I've got my cousin here!"

Employee: "I'm sorry, but the answer is still no."

Kid: "But my parents let me watch Saw!"

I think those one million moms should be more concerned with the other hundred million in the country than what a commercial suggests might otherwise happen with a talking pig that drives a car.

Firm moves to trademark 'Python' name out from under the language

"I'm sorry, you've got cancer. You've got five years to live."

"Oh god..."

"Nah, just screwing with you! It's really just three months!"

Apple tech FOUND ON ANDROID: Passbook gets pay-by-bonk

Re: Agreed

Depending on implementation, NFC can work when your phone is off with a drained battery, not just when it's unlocked.

iOS 6.x hack allows personal data export, free calls

Seems like a race condition

Depending on how the screen locker is coded, it could be as simple as tweaking a few lines to deploy a "fix" to buy more time to properly fix the thing. Given that the home button is effectively disabled, it seems as if the locking method is just interrupted while setting variables in the system.

Surface RT now on sale in 13 more European markets

Re: Surface != Surface

You are indeed right, but the Surface Pro is a new player to the game. The only thing distinguishing the two is the "Pro". Microsoft is betting its money that that's all that's needed. Maybe it is, but I doubt it. This will probably end up like the Vista Capable kerfuffle.

Re: "Wonderful PCs"?

I agree to an extent and gave you an upvote, but to be fair, they've been marketing it as the Microsoft Surface, not as Windows itself. At least in the US, their ads have... not really shown much of Windows at all, to be honest. Just people jumping around and clicking things together with the occasional shot of the start screen. I'd say Microsoft's biggest mistake was not releasing it with compatibility for existing Windows Phone 7 apps.

I checked the Windows Store today from a Windows 8 PC at work and saw barely anything in the way of apps that people want. I deleted my Facebook account (for a reason), but given its popularity, I decided to check for a Facebook app in the store. Sure, there were a few third-party apps, several of which cost money, but there wasn't an official app from Zuck & Co themselves.

Like it or not, people with mobile devices want apps, not websites, even if that app is only just an HTML5 wrapper for the website. I'm not sure if there's a Facebook app for Windows Phone 7 either (pretty sure there is, if I recall correctly), but nevertheless, support for its apps would've brought about an instant cache of software available to the platform.

Android? Like Marvin the robot? Samsung eclipses Google OS - Gartner

Samsung markets their Bada-powered devices under the Wave brand, as opposed to the Galaxy brand. It seems that it's the Galaxy brand, not necessarily just the Samsung brand alone, that matters to customers buying Android-powered phones who might be otherwise confused.

All Galaxy-branded devices ship with Google Play. Even if Bada were 100% compatible with Android and Dalvik, Google almost certainly would never license the Play Store to it. Whether customers know the difference between Android and the Galaxy brand or not, most do use the Play Store and would expect any purchases made in Android to be accessible from any Galaxy-branded phone.

If Samsung ever did hope to overthrow Android with Bada, they would have to do it by increasing consumer awareness of the Wave brand instead or by emphasizing their own app store in the Galaxy brand, downplaying Google Play. In the long term, things may be different, but as things stand, Samsung can't afford to drop Android. Sudden execution of the Galaxy brand would be corporate suicide, so for now at least, Google really doesn't have much to worry about.

The Register Android App

@jubtastic1

I know at least on Android, Chrome has options to force the ability to zoom even if it's disabled, and Firefox has an extension that allows you to do that.

Linux boot doesn't smash Samsung laptops any more

Re: Speedy fix!

As much as I'd like to agree with this, the problem has been known about for several months, though not the exact cause. I recall reading release notes back in October warning not to install Ubuntu on certain models of Samsung laptops with UEFI firmwares, that several had been bricked.

Microsoft: Old Internet Explorer is terrible and 'we want to help'

Re: Re-inventing the wheel again ?

FrontPage sucked, sure, but Expression Web actually mostly produced fairly readable and standards-compliant code.

How to destroy a brand-new Samsung laptop: Boot Linux on it

Re: Does Samsung support Linux?

At the end of the day...regardless of what Samsung does on the Linux front, if it says LINUX is not supported on this hardware (or alternatively *only* OS xxxx is), then the risk is entirely yours.

So... What you're saying is... it's still Samsung's fault.

'Silent but deadly' Java security update breaks legacy apps - dev

Re: Thanks Oracle, for showing us how to fix security issues

@AC 17:19

Yeah, sure, that's how you can "fix" the problem on your home PC, but this article is about its impact on enterprise environments, not home PCs. You can't just remove software from or change functionality on an enterprise system without testing how it affects your workflow, unless you simply want to gamble your institution's ability to conduct business.

As I see it, you appear to have read an article about enterprise software, commented about your own home situation, and followed up with a clause in parentheses indicating that you don't care about enterprise software. Did I miss something?

Re: Thanks Oracle, for showing us how to fix security issues

Linux on the desktop is not popular, true, but Linux on the server most certainly is very popular. Desktop environments may have security vulnerabilities that aren't too well-documented or known, but most of the security vulnerabilities in the Linux and GNU subsystems themselves are quickly patched as soon as they're discovered. That said, recent versions of Windows can be configured to be nearly as secure as the Unix-based and Unix-like systems nowadays. Most security issues tend to be Trojan horses nowadays, no matter the platform.

Review: Intel 335 240GB SSD

Re: 7% overprovisioning and a data protection nightmare

Given that solid state storage can't retain ghost data by nature of not relying on magnetic states, in theory, a single low-level writing of any bit pattern onto the entire device should suffice in securely deleting all data stored upon it. I wouldn't trust such a technique with highly sensitive data, but it should work in theory. In practice, the firmware may not write the data as you would expect it to be written due to wear-leveling, potentially leaving traces of something behind somewhere. That said, I'm not a security expert and don't claim to be.

Apple releases iOS 6.1, adds LTE carriers, tweaks security

Re: So I take it...

I'm aware you can't set anything else as default. I can't set the TomTom app as default on my Android phone either due to the developers' not implementing the ability, even though the Android API does allow for it. I'm not too bothered about it; I didn't buy my phone for maps.

Just because I don't personally own an iOS device doesn't mean I'm not educated about it and don't come into contact with it. Why do you think I read an article about a new iOS update in the first place? It certainly wasn't so I could take to the comments section just to chide people for their choice of mobile devices. I just wish people would accept that different people like different things and not bicker over trivial things like the integrated maps application on a mobile OS.

Re: So I take it...

Would you kindly give it a rest already? I don't even own a single piece of Apple equipment, and that's getting old. There are alternatives if the default maps app doesn't suit your needs.

Twitter adds loopy videos with Vine integration

Short video clips on Twitter?

As if I weren't bombarded with enough phony, pornographic follow requests or whatever already on my unused account. Now they get video clips too.

Linksys vuln: Cisco responds

What about the WRT54G v4?

Did they replace the v4's firmware with the VxWorks-based firmware, or is it also affected? If I recall correctly, the WRT54GL is more or less the exact same model as the WRT54G v4. The older versions also ran the Linux-based firmwares - what about them?

Microsoft ends Mac users' Windows Phone 8 misery

Re: And meanwhile

Alas, Android phones don't work as Mass Storage Class devices anymore.

They do if you have root and make a quick change in a terminal emulator. Most people would prefer MTP instead though. I do think it should be an option that doesn't require root access, but that would probably confuse most people. Then again, they could always just throw that in an "Advanced" section.

Ex-Doctor Who babe Karen Gillan touts dodgy diet pills in twit gaffe

I guess this is why the 11th Doctor scoffs at Twitter given the chance

That is all.

Microsoft pats self on back over Windows 8 sales

I've deployed Windows 8 at a small workplace and customized it for a few home computers. I've found that once all the file associations with the Metro Windows Store apps are changed, using it with the classic desktop isn't really any more cumbersome.

The only real problems I've really encountered have been with a few drivers and Server Message Block. Introducing a Windows 8 PC to the network caused SMB 1.0 support to stop working from a Windows 7 machine for some inexplicable reason, which somewhat expedited the situation in regards to upgrading away from XP. Furthermore, a few drivers were preventing certain updates from applying. That's since been remedied through Windows Update though.

Overall, the performance enhancements have been nice. I'm still not a fan of Metro, but you can work around it if you have to. It still feels like two separate desktop environments ironed together, but perhaps that's best since you can still revert for the most part. As it stands, after a bit of configuration, less training has been required for my coworkers than I had previously expected.

That said, I've just provided one anecdote. Only time will tell how it will be ultimately received, but my own experience has shown that it won't be the nightmare most have feared. I admit I still do have a bit more to learn with regards to Windows 8 management though.

China fines Samsung and LG for LCD price-fixing

Meanwhile, this fixes what exactly? I mean, sure, the companies were penalized and aren't likely to do it again in the near future, but what about the end users who actually had to make technology purchases affected by the price-fixing conspiracy? The money isn't exactly making its way back to them, is it? With such a small fine, the companies are still coming out ahead, while China's government gets a small boost in funds. The same thing really applies around the world. I've not read anywhere about reparations to the ones actually harmed by the artificially raised prices. Of course, I may have missed something, but all I've seen is just a few slaps on the wrists of the companies and a small boost in government funds that didn't come from taxes.

2012: The year that netbooks DIED

I bought my Dell Mini 10v (from which I'm posting now, actually) for one reason: taking notes in my university courses. I didn't need a lot of horsepower, just something lightweight that had a long battery life. An Ultrabook would be a bit spendy for what I needed even if it existed at the time. Android tablets were all but nonexistant, and I also needed a physical keyboard. I do however now own an Asus TF300T for media consumption and for when I need to spend a long term on battery.

Do I regret buying my netbook? Not at all - I certainly got my money's worth out of it, and I still use it from time to time, primarily as a testbed for various Linux distributions and configurations. VMs are great, but nothing beats actual hardware for real life testing environments.

I knew the netbook form factor's days were limited when the first models launched, but I must admit I am a little sad to see them die off completely.

Apple loses iPhone patent lawsuit

Re: That call rejection patent...

I'm not going to defend the validity of the patent since I have rather mixed views on patents, especially with regards to software. Though to be completely fair, before the phone system became at least partially digital, there was no way to screen calls prior to answering. I only glossed over the abstract of the patent, not the full explanation, but there is a bit of novelty to the patent in being able to reject a call without first answering it.

That said, I personally do not agree with any sort of software patent and feel that software should be protected by copyrights and trade secrets alone. But eh, what's my opinion worth?

Netflix names Google Fiber the fastest ISP in the US

Re: Someone is off by an Order of Magnitude....

They're actually reporting in megabits per second, not megabytes. The initial graphic that was provided, the one used in the story at The Register, was replaced on the official blog post with a less-ambiguous chart reading "Mbps", unstylized as compared to before.

That said, Netflix provides compressed video, so full utilization of bandwidth is not usually required. I use AT&T U-Verse and easily get my full advertised 12Mbps on most services and can usually use other services while someone is watching Netflix without any obvious performance loss.

Internet Explorer tracks cursor even when minimised

Re: Which ad analytics companies?

@dssf: Thank you for your valuable post. I appreciate the time you took to research the subject and comprehensively answer the question posed in the original post. I now know precisely which advertising analytics companies to block in order to mitigate the risk at work. Again, thank you.

Google's Drive + Gmail: A 10GB Dropbox killer

Re: no such thing as "free" storage

You aren't familiar with how these file synchronization services work, are you? They aren't like network shares that you can mount as pseudo-local filesystem locations. Be it Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, Ubuntu One, or whatever, you have to install a daemon (not a device driver) to run on top of the operating system, usually in user space. They all generally monitor a specified directory's contents and synchronize changes in either direction when they happen.

With regards to installing a proprietary piece of software that does things without your knowledge, Google Drive's APIs are actually quite open, so there's nothing stopping you from writing your own synchronization software for it. In fact, that's exactly what has been done with Linux so far. I can think of at least two clients for Google Drive available for Linux that are not made by Google, one of which is proprietary (Insync) and one of which is open source (grive).

There just simply isn't a standard device model for synchronization across various operating systems. Even local filesystems are implemented differently throughout the different operating systems. For instance, NTFS, a proprietary file system, is supported only in user space in Linux, apparently due to licensing issues. Ext4 and btrfs on the other hand, both open source file systems, aren't supported in Windows at all.

Regarding privacy and security, I will grant you that you do indeed have a point, but that is a risk you run with any remote storage solution, free or not. In fact, all the services I named above do actually provide additional remote storage capacity for nominal fees.

Re: Google Drive & Dropbox

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/drive

If you use Mac or Windows, you're in luck. There are third-party clients for Linux, but the official client isn't ready yet.

Pirate cops bust LITTLE GIRL, take her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop

Re: 9 years old

If you really want to be pedantic, a formerly living being from 362,880 years ago is unlikely to have completely fossilized by now (while we're grabbing our textbooks and all).