* Posts by Ole Juul

2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

Rounded corners on Android phones cost Samsung $548m: It will pay up to Apple after all

Ole Juul

workaround

Samsung should probably have sold them as a kit. Square corners and include a piece of sandpaper.

(and then patent that concept)

Smut-seeding Prenda Law ringleader must sell home to pay $2.5m debt

Ole Juul

Finally

This should have happened a long time ago.

VPN users menaced by port forwarding blunder

Ole Juul

According to Wikipedia OpenVPN works on Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, QNX, Mac OS X, and Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8. I use it on FreeBSD and Linux. There's not much to running either the client or server - just a very small config file. If you don't want to bother running your own server, or want the added anonymity of being part of a large group, or the luxury of choosing among servers in many different countries, then get a commercial VPN. Most of them support OpenVPN as well as others. Check out the TorrentFreak annual list, but most important, read up very carefully so you understand both what you need and what you get.

Ole Juul

Who would use this attack?

"If the attacker has port forwarding activated for his account on the same server, he can find out the real IP addresses of any user on the same VPN server by tricking him into visiting a link that redirects the traffic to a port under his control," the researchers say.

I suppose this attack would be useful for copyright companies who are just interested in catching whatever they can. It seems to me that an attacker trying to target a single specific person would not find this too useful unless they also knew what commercial VPN their target was using. In any case I sidestep the matter entirely by being the only user with access to my own VPN. That has other disadvantages security wise, but in this case it's a win.

Final countdown – NSA says it really will end blanket phone spying on US citizens this Sunday

Ole Juul

Still waiting

For a large lot of refurbished hard drives to appear on eBay.

Ole Juul

Re: They Have The Content

Why do the news articles NEVER point that out?

Because they're complicit.

Grow up, judge tells EFF: You’re worse than a complaining child

Ole Juul

Re: @ Ole Juul (was: To opine or not)

" you are a fucking idiot.

TCP/IP isn't a guarantied delivery mechanism. Never has been, never will be."

Of course I'm an idiot. You don't need to tell me that. However, where I live the land based telephone line has had a very bad record of not staying functional and the whole little town has been disconnected for days on end. My internet connection is wireless and has been on almost 100%. For emergency use I'll take my VoIP over a corporate don't-care approach. Especially if my life depended on it. Yes, in larger centres the copper has a stellar reputation for both reliability and quality but that is not the case in many smaller places. Remember too that my local ISP depends on it's uptime for making a living. The big telco (Telus) operates under law that says it does not even have to reimburse you beyond a legally mandated very low amount if the service is poor or non-existent. Even worse, the metric used by the Canadian phone companies in their legally mandated quarterly quality of service reports avoids most serious outages. Jake, I recommend you don't comment on communications relate matters until you have a look around. :)

Ole Juul

To opine or not

I do see how the wording from the EFF is lacking seriousness, but the judge too sounds somewhat privileged in his response. In my case, I rely on the internet for my phone and 911 connection. It is also how I get news and weather warnings which are often important to me. I can afford either a land line or an internet connection and certainly not a satellite television package (which I would not like anyway). I can accept that the 200 people named are likely not rural and probably have many more communications options for which they also have money to pay. However, the judge is speaking from the point of view of someone who is making assumptions about other people's lives. He does sound like he is adding personal opinion to his response.

Who's right on crypto: An American prosecutor or a Lebanese coder?

Ole Juul

non-parallel

The American prosecutor seems to think that it is possible to solve or prevent 100% of all crimes. That is a fallacy and would lead to a society where civilized people would not want to live. He quotes examples of individual cases as if a single one will be relevant to this discussion. This is not about cases, but about principles. This article is pitting the impossible dream of one man against the rights of all humans.

Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

Ole Juul

Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

That doesn't make any sense. KDE is a GUI for Linux and Unix systems. If you don't like KDE you would open a command prompt which would typically be bash. I suppose you could launch dosemu or freedos via a VM in Linux though I don't see much point. If you're so dyed in the wool that you haven't advanced from DOS then why bother with KDE at all?

Why doesn't that make sense? I use tcsh on BSD and have numerous terminals open in KDE, those are my three favourite environments, but DOS is simpler and much quicker because of the low level control. I'm well aware of the limitations of DOS, but also the advantages. The utilities available for DOS are superb (check out the Simtel and other huge libraries) and it is worth using and jumping back and forth from the BSD to the DOS machines. With a modern network stack everything communicates so the lan is like one machine anyway. Don't know about Windows, to me Microsoft's real gem is DOS.

Ole Juul
Coat

Re: "While arguably less efficient than a command line"

"CLI too in many cases can be very inefficient."

I'm not sure what those would be. With command completion, automatic cd to any directory on any drive, and a well chosen set of TSR's the efficiency is pretty high. You do know that the first thing you do when setting up a DOS machine is write batch files for all your tasks. Right? In fact you will probably just copy over a big pile of your old ones.

I still use DOS most days and find it very efficient alongside KDE. And can report that it is only the things which DOS doesn't do which are more efficient on KDE. By the way, although the software wasn't written back then, now we have a complete TCP/IP networking stack that will run off a floppy and even using DOS 2.0. Of course, not everybody keeps up with the times.

Mine's the one with the copy of Pocket PC Ref.

Conficker is back – and it's infecting police body cams

Ole Juul

Re: Your equipment is supplied by the lowest bidder. (@Ole Juul)

I honestly don't think those are likely possibilities do you? Besides, you do know I was kidding. Right?

Ole Juul

Re: Your equipment is supplied by the lowest bidder.

I agree that it's probably better to always choose the second lowest, just to keep it honest. But I suspect the problem is lack of completeness in the specification. They probably forgot to specify that the cameras not have malware on them.

Tor Project: US government paid university $1m bounty to hack our networks

Ole Juul
Coat

Could happen

The Anti Hacker Alliance fights against 128.2.42.10

Fake IT admin tricked Cox rep into handing over customer database – cableco fined $600k

Ole Juul

Re: This Security Hole is now CLOSED!

Have an upvote - that's just too funny! :)

'Anonymous' says anonymous KKK dump wasn't from Anonymous

Ole Juul

Re: I'm anonymous!

And so's the horse I rode in in.

Wikipedia cracks the five-million article barrier, in English

Ole Juul

Re: One wonders ...

I don't. Lots of them have bad English. I've edited a few just because I couldn't stand the grammar.

Ole Juul

Re: But it isn't in English

The sun did eventually set on the British Empire. Sorry.

I'm not American and I've generally followed British spellings and grammar. However, English is a language of change and one does not have to follow British rules in order to have good language. Let's get over it, and start to become a bit more international, shall we?

Indian net neutrality fans tell Facebook to Zuck off

Ole Juul

Trojan

Glad to see they're not all buying into this trojan. I note too that the letter is from "digital rights organizations and groups from across the world", so it's not just the Indians who aren't backing this horse.

CISA blowup: 'Web giants sharing private info isn't about security – it's state surveillance'

Ole Juul

attacks from the Feds

. . . by not sharing people's personal information, they will not be given intelligence and heads up on attacks from the Feds.

We're already being attacked by the Feds. No heads up needed.

Our intuitive AI outperforms (most) puny humans, claims MIT

Ole Juul

Re: mind reading still required

@Fraggle850: That's not necessary. Any stuff that happens in a human's head is ultimately manifested through their subsequent actions and this is what is being analysed from the subsequent data trails that they leave.

The stuff that happens in a human's head is the stuff of humans. To exchange what is "ultimately manifested through their subsequent actions" with the world of humans is an obfuscation and I fear that the developers have used an old trick here. I enjoy a magic show as much as the next guy, but after the show I go back to the real world where humans and physics are no longer the same.

Ole Juul

mind reading still required

The MIT team suggests that the computer system could be used to establish a baseline of results to check against a human response.

Sounds good. Now we just need a way to make meaningful data out of all the stuff that happens in a human's head in response to something.

Temperature of Hell drops a few degrees – Microsoft emits SSH-for-Windows source code

Ole Juul

Re: Good.

Indeed. It'll be nice to just be able to connect to those Windows machines.

White House to Feds: Stop buying new PCs, laptops right now

Ole Juul

Centralizing the fraud and graft into fewer pockets is not going to be popular.

What! They're not going to use Microsoft any more?

Facebook appoints self world police, promises state attack warnings

Ole Juul

Re: well that would be..

Facebook. With 1.49 billion monthly active users I'd call that a nation. I'm not a member, but I keep finding them having infiltrated my cookie folder and generally getting in my face. That's an attack, so I guess I'd have to report them.

So just what is the third Great Invention of all time?

Ole Juul

Re: Moveable Type

As you know, paper and papyrus existed for thousands of years before type. Anything that was written, or copied, was very expensive because it was all done by hand. You needed to be very rich to benefit from it.

Exactly. Although there were things like papyrus it did not allow people to transfer information in large quantities to other people across continents and generations. Academic work before paper, although intellectually significant, was not distributed to an extent that would allow real development of science and technology to the extent that it would really take off. It wasn't until a printing medium became cheap that we could have libraries all over the world where one could read about the work of others. What I'm saying is that without paper, we would not have any of our modern day science and technology. We now have digital storage and communication, but even that could not have happened without the ability to accumulate and transfer information in quantity.

Ole Juul

Re: Moveable Type

And how far would you get with movable type if you didn't have paper?

Ole Juul

Not really an "invention"

I don't think that an idea is really a nominee here. People have always been doing a lot of thinking and had a lot of ideas. This is not to say that they're not important, but rather to say that there's no shortage and it is actually because of something else that they have been able to become powerful and useful, and above all to become available at the right time in the right situation. The ability to take data and store, recall, and transport it over time and distance is what has allowed the civilization that we now take for granted. This facility we got through the development of paper.

I say development, because I don't believe that someone sat down and invented it. Rather it just started coming about and the process got refined.* There were several huge steps involved in more modern times. I'd say the first was the invention of the Hollander (early 1700s), that drove down the price of paper for books to where many more people could have them. The second was the development of cheap fibre made from wood (late 1800s). I'm sure most people have noted the huge amount of books that started coming out in the 20 years following 1890s.

* I'm familiar with Ts'ai Lun, but am skeptical. In any case there was a lot of work to do from that point on.

Sprint sprints away from no-throttle policy – punishes 'unlimited' network hoggers

Ole Juul

Re: Seems sensible

Only sensible in a minimalist kind of way - like Morse code. Try using LastFM for music, for example. They use Youtube videos (even if you just listen to the music) and if you have music on all day you'll have 20GB/mo right there.

A 3GB data limit would be about e-mail, banking, and a bit of shopping. Surely you're mistaken! I'm on rural wireless here in Canada. Everybody shares the same tower for many miles around, and the ISP gives us 20GB/mo on just their introductory package. I'm able to live with that, but these kinds of usage levels are not what most people expect when they're talking about internet.

Ole Juul

This low bandwidth surprises me. As someone who would rarely download as much as two movies a year, I use an average 35Gb/month on just regular browsing with perhaps an iso thrown in. Surely people who are movie fans would double that without half trying.

Shocker: Net anarchist builds sneaky 220v USB stick that fries laptops

Ole Juul

Business opportunity

This could make people paranoid. After all, someone could have switched out one of these for one that looked the same and which you thought was a good one.

A solution would be to sell USB checkers into which you first plug your sticks to see if they're safe to plug into your computer.

Ole Juul

Re: Net anarchist?

Difficult to imagine a situation where you wouldn't have better luck with a hatchet.

But then you'd get caught.

Dry those eyes, ad blockers are unlikely to kill the internet

Ole Juul

assumptions

"They know that most people if given the easy choice would block ad's,"

I doubt the know that, but being advertising people, they think a lot of stuff.

"and they know that there is going to be a large portion of those people that would actually positively impact sales if they saw the ad's."

They have no idea about that. In fact I'd go so far as to say that if they say that, they're lying.

Japan begins mega-rollout of 100 million+ national IDs

Ole Juul

how we forget

What, they don't already have the equivalent of National Insurance Numbers?

Most countries have that. We have SIN (social insurance numbers) here in Canada which we got in 1964. It would seem that Japan is the last to do this and so is in fact 50 years behind the times.

FBI: We unmasked and collared child porn creep on Tor with spy tool

Ole Juul

Re: Bias?

I have to agree with Paul. Starting off an article insinuating that darkweb users are deadbeats is a little distasteful. And the cheap language that follows does not mix well with what could have been an article with good IT content. Perhaps if it had been posted in bootnotes, it would have been another matter.

Ole Juul

Re: Serious question here...

All of your laws are belong to US.

Thousands of 'directly hackable' hospital devices exposed online

Ole Juul

who's responsibility?

all running Windows XP or XP service pack two

Really? I don't travel in those circles, but surely this should be the land of QNX and *NIX variants. From this article it would appear that security hasn't even been a concern. Could it be that the buyers of medical equipment are not savvy enough to demand this?

NSA? Illegal spying? EU top lawyer is talking out of his Bot – US gov

Ole Juul

trust?

You can't pipe people's private information out of Europe unless you can promise to keep that data safe.

Uncle Sam will promise anything for a buck.

The pachyderm punch: El Reg takes just-over-a-ton Elephone P8000 to tusk

Ole Juul

Re: Trunk calls?

Is that an elephant on the telephone

or a telephant on the elephone?

~ Ogden Nash

Feds want a phone smart enough to burn itself if it falls into the wrong hands

Ole Juul

Re: They're making a big mistake...

I'm not entirely sure that it's even possible to detect a "wrong" person without having a database of all persons. Certainly biometrics is going to be very difficult in a situation where a person is bedridden and they ask someone to bring them their phone. The biometrics database would have to be extremely large.

German regulator sets VW deadline

Ole Juul

Not even driven? Blimey! That will sting...

I'll really feel sorry for the owners if that happens. It could cause some serious hardship for some. As for VW the sting is deserved. If cars go off the road, they'll probably see the mother of all class action law suits from people who want a working vehicle.

Facebook to users (sorry, PEOPLE): Party like it's 2005 and blog your little hearts out

Ole Juul

What a time to be alive.

God yes. Low-rise jeans, yoga pants, and aviator sunglasses.

Oi, ICANN! Get to the bottom of this bottom-up process, haul ass – ex-Prez advisor

Ole Juul

Re: Rushing will only set the internet back.

Is Ira Magaziner advocating the FIFA model?

After reading your comment I re-read the article. I don't think Magaziner is looking for a FIFA model. That's essentially what ICANN is now, and that's the problem. They, as Magazier says, are "letting your dislikes or your fears or distrust get in the way". It's ICANN which is fearful of any changes and who is holding this back and pretending to go through a process when they don't even want a process. They just want this whole thing to go away because they see it as a threat. That's why any community involvement is continually being thwarted. I'm guessing Magaziner is hoping that ICANN will let go of their "fears and distrust" and allow for some community involvement - involvement that doesn't just entail going to meetings, but provides some actual input.

Ole Juul

disingenuous

ICANN has absolutely no intention of moving forward on this.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Ole Juul

higher power

Connecting to the network of your understanding.

Here, near the shore of Santa Monica, we see ICANN in its natural habitat – doing nothing

Ole Juul

this point?

It has taken a year of solid work to get to this point.

They're still at the starting line.

VW: Just the tip of the pollution iceberg. Who's to blame? Hippies

Ole Juul

Re: Thanks a lot, hippies.

I got what Lewis is saying and it's fine, but his writing is not clever or funny. It's convoluted and speaks more of his own internal issues than about the world he's struggling to describe.

Ole Juul

Thanks a lot, hippies.

You're welcome. By the way, I've never seen any of us hippies driving a diesel. Must be a local thing where you're living.

How can we manage this internet thing? The Euro gov needs YOU

Ole Juul

brilliant

If there are problems, someone will need to be more precise about what exactly they are

In other words before you decide on a solution, you need to decide on a problem.

Controversial: The future is data integrity, not confidentiality

Ole Juul

You get emails which actually have a plain text part?

My e-mail reader is set for text and sometimes if I can't read a message inform the sender of that fact. They can take it from there.

In any case and just for the record, I just sent myself an e-mail with the subject "empty" and it came in at 579 bytes. I assume 5 of those were for the subject line.

I wouldn't fault the President on that though. He was just making a point.