Posts by Pablo

Google can kill or install apps on citizen Androids

RE: So?

So... who wants a free copy of BuzzMobile?

Observer columnist in online porn mixup

It's "fixed" again

It now says "...where addresses will have the suffix xxx (similar to the prefix www)." I've got to hand it to them, that's the *least* wrong version so far. But the fact remains that xxx is not in any way equivalent to www.

nCircle purges posts after researcher's arrest for explosives

Probably

They're most likely referring to a different device from the one you're thinking of. You're might be imagining a toy that shoot small plugs of potato. I'm assuming they're talking about a potato *cannon*, which fires whole potatoes.

It's still more toy than terrorist weapon though, albeit a somewhat dangerous, adult-supervision-required kind of toy.

Obama Twitter hacker avoids jail

Not quite...

Actually we still don't know how much (if any) jail time "that dude" will get. Sentencing is set for September 24th.

Google vanishes Android apps from citizen phones

To Summarize

The Marketplace is just as much a backdoor as the apps in question. Good to know.

To clarify

I certainly didn't mean to suggest I would ever buy an iPhone.

Wow, that sucks

I thought freedom from this kind of crap was the main selling point for Android phones. I admit I wasn't really in the market for a smartphone anyway, but if I was, it would have been Android powered, until I read this. Unless there's some way to turn that feature off, it's a deal breaker.

If it asked your permission, that would be one thing. That would be a good feature in fact. I could probably even be convinced that a no-prompt kill switch was acceptable if it were reserved for genuine emergencies (e.g. an app the exploits a security hole and trashes your phone), but that Google would use it for apps that were merely "practically useless" suggests they have no intention of practicing such restraint.

Old timer cleared of extreme porn charges

I think what they're saying is...

He may have downloaded it before doing so was a crime, and because he didn't *intentionally* keep it, he wasn't for practical purposes in possession either. That doesn't seem like such an unreasonable interpretation, as such things go. Though I have to wonder if (and hope) there is some element of the government backpedaling from an obviously foolish law.

@ Why

The Original Ash made no reference to child porn or children whatsoever. Unless you consider the words pervert and paedophile synonymous. Surely there are other kinds of perverts.

Won't someone think of the puppies?

Google's Wi-Fi snoop nabbed passwords and emails

What?

Why is this news? It goes without saying that if Google was snarfing up network data that it would include email and passwords. Are we going to have to read a separate story for each category of data? "Google intercepted chats!" "Google intercepted file downloads!" "Google intercepted porn!"

Microsoft and eBay build fraudster blacklist

Lovely

So now if my eBay password gets stolen, as if that weren't annoying enough, I'll find myself on some kind of fraud blacklist too?

Utah Attorney General tweets execution go-ahead

This was Utah

'Nuff said.

Canadians form adulterers' privacy campaign

Privacy Implications

Funny story, but I think it raises some interesting privacy implications. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it was her husband who requested consolidated billing and Rogers just assumed it was OK for him to make billing changes to both their accounts. Is that reasonable or not? I'm sure various companies have already considered this kind of thing, but I can't say I'd thought of it before.

It's a tricky question, because I think most people would consider it perfectly fine for their spouse to access their account and deal with routine billing issues and such, and may even be slightly annoyed if they can't. But on the other hand... well you've got cases like this.

Philippines declare war on cyberlingo

Nah

It's clearly not the same. That "translator" is clearly bogus. It's only a transliterator, at best. But there's more too it than just replacing letters. For instance a simplistic "l33tsp33k" translator might render "I will hack your computer and find you" as "! w!11 h4(|< y0ur (0mpu73r 4nd f!nd y0u!" whereas a more authentic translation would be something like "I w1ll h4xx0r y3r compy & f1nd j00!".

So that's where l33t and jejemon differ. But even on the transliteration level, you should be able to pick up a few differences. In l33t speak, 7 is T and 1 is L. But in jejemon, 7 seems to stand for L.

...I should probably be embarrassed that I know this, huh?

Aussies face 10 year browsing lock-up

I'd like to think so

Really, I would. But I have my doubts that even snooping on that scale would get the majority of people motivated to use encryption. Sure it would raise awareness a little, and provide motivation for a few new user-friendly encryption tools. But at the end of the day, I fear more people agree with Google... nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Either that or they're just too lazy to do anything about it.

Microsoft rejects porn, iPad protesters fake it

I'm honestly a little surprised

Not that M$ won't allow pr0n in their app store, but that they're following in Apple's footsteps and telling people what they can and can't install on their own hardware. I would have thought they'd try to differentiate themselves a bit. If M$ insists on using the same F'd up business model, why would anyone choose their phone over the already popular iPhone?

Google's Wi-Fi sniff probe reveals 'criminal intent' - PI

There's the thing

It's easy to make analogies to spin this one way or the other (It's like burglary, no it's like eavesdropping, etc, etc.) But here's the key point, IMHO. Network packets have a specific addressee. If you are not that addressee, you have no business reading them. So the best analogy I think is reading someone else's mail (let's a assume it's a postcard, and hence not sealed). It's not burglary, but it's not as innocent as listening to a conversation in public either.

China net addicts' great escape foiled by taxi drivers

Ambiguous pronouns

I read that to mean their parents told police to the the kids back to the camp. So yeah, I guess you're right after all, bad home life.

Romanian boffin touts 1PB holographic disk tech

Let's see...

Looks like you lose out on one hundred twenty-five trillion, eight hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred six million, eight hundred forty-two thousand, six hundred twenty-four (125,899,906,842,624) bytes!

iPad apps may need to be disabled-accessible

I agree

A lot of what makes a site accessible is just good design. I think I get a small taste of what it's like to be "disabled" on the web, just because I have browser locked down pretty tight. (NoScript, etc.) Of course I can just turn all that back on if I need to, but still, it strikes me how often sites could accommodate that kind of browser set up with just tiny, tiny changes. One of the silliest things I've seen, is when they have one of those Flash-based splash pages and conveniently provide a "skip" link... inside the Flash animation.

Woman sues Google after highway knockdown

Anybody check out the route?

I thought I might as well take advantage of one of Google's other services and have a looksee with streetview. True enough, there's no sidewalk, but there's a strip of dirt/grass on both sides. I can't comment on the legality, but it doesn't seem infeasible to walk along that to me. So on the one hand, I don't think this woman was crazy to do so, but on the other, I don't think it was necessarily incorrect for Google to have that in there database as a walkable street. There is clearly a better route, which is only slightly longer, but does anybody really expect computer-generated directions to use the *best* route?

Mozilla sidesteps iPhone code ban with Firefox Home

Right premise, wrong conclusion

Yes all of those are equally rotten. But it does not logically follow that we should stop complaining about the iPhone. Maybe we should complain more about the others. Yeah "they created it", and then they *sold it*. Normally it is understood that you relinquish your "do what you want with it" rights when something is no longer your property, see?

HTML5 'unhinged from reality,' say Javascripters

I was expecting something different

When I saw the headline, I thought this was going to be about all the strange new tags that have been added which have either no discernible purpose, no standard visual representation, or both.

Computing smart-scope gunsight for US snipers

Good question

I assume they would use an IR or other invisible laser. Theoretically, it could still be detected, but in practice I imagine that would be fairly difficult.

Queen's speech pledges faster deficit cut, 'freedom bill'

Unnecessary laws

So, did Extreme Porn make the list?

'World's largest' airship inflated in colossal Alabama cowshed

Key word: Was

I think they're saying it will be larger than any airship still in use.

Google TV: Android and Chrome on your boob tube

Brilliant!

They could call it Web-TV!

iPad pawprints for voter registration

To be fair...

Pen signatures are kind of a joke too. How often do you think anyone really bothers to compare them? And in this case, I don't think election officials even have anything to compare them TO.

Robot Sergey Brin stuns crowd

Unclear

Are these autonomous, or controlled by a person? The term "telepresence" implies they are remotely controlled, but calling them robots implies autonomy. It's an important distinction, isn't it?

Clegg promises liberties restoration

Good luck

Our last "regime change" stateside has been quite underwhelming from a civil liberties standpoint. I hope you fair better.

Google: Street View spycars did slurp your Wi-Fi

MAC

If I'm not mistaken, the wireless MAC address and the internet-facing upstream MAC address would not be the same. However they might be sequential, I don't actually know.

Welsh police come down hard on Octopussy porn

Re: So let me get this straight...

Draw (or animated) CP is illegal. Animated (or drawn) EP is not (unless it's so realistic as to fool a reasonable person). But presumably they'll be closing that "loophole" any time now.

Can't blame you for being confused.

Re: Thing about this fetish

Good God, NO!

Bear and Monkey smack Apple with patent suit

Well...

How about they just stop granting software patents? Software is already protected by copyright, which IMHO is really more appropriate.

IWF: Good on child abuse...

North America != US

But aside from that, I imagine much of that figure reflects Web2.0rhea, user generated content on various popular services (Facebook, MediaFire, 4chan... Wikipedia) the majority of which are US based. Remember this was supposed to be the number of reports, not totally amount of child porn, or number of "child porn sites". Some girl posts her boobs on MySpace and it could easily generate multiple reports, whereas the super secret pedophile ring doesn't have any.

I am curious how much differing laws comes into play, though. Or just plain over-zealous reporting of things that aren't illegal anywhere.

Mozilla detects insecure plugins for IE, Chrome, Safari

Cute

Apparently using NoScript puts me in the same category as Richard Stallman.

Physicist unmasks 99-year-old mistake in English dictionaries

Experiment

I just did an experiment, to put this to the test.

Materials: A plastic jug of water with two holes in it (not counting the top, wish is capped). Two lengths of tubing which fit through the holes tightly. Each tube extends below the water level.

Result: By blowing air into either tube, I could make water come out the other. And it continued flowing as long as the exit of the water tube was lower than the bottle. The relative position of the air tube made no visible difference (i.e. it could be lower than the water tube).

Interpretation: Though pressure is necessary, and there is an interplay of effects, gravity IS the driving force.

Student found guilty of obstruction in Sarah Palin email trial

Bogus

Isn't it ridiculous that he faces far more jail time on a trumped up charge than for the original offense? Obstructing justice, yeah right. This has nothing to do with justice. He is only being punished because he made the mistake of pissing off the powers that be. If he illegally accessed MY email account nobody would lift a finger.

Sony sued for dropping Linux from PS3

Hold on

Tell me, did they agree to that before or after buying the product Sony claimed had "Other OS" support? If it was after it's irrelevant to this case.

San Francisco's rogue BOFH is guilty

It's unusual...

But once the trial is over they are free to talk about it. In this case I'm a little surprised since the sentencing hasn't happened yet, but I would hope the juror in question had enough sense to check with a lawyer/judge first about exactly when their obligation to keep quite ended.

Kent police bring obscenity charge over online chat

Maybe...

The other party to the conversation WAS the police.

Sun sat sends stunning solar snap

Roy G. Biv

Probably because blue IS "hotter" than red. Being scientifically minded folks, NASA apparently choose to use blue for the higher frequency UV and red for the lower frequency UV. It agree it's a little counter-intuitive, but in terms of the spectrum standpoint it makes sense.

Amazon sues US state on customers' privacy

So?

It's not like you would expect better from any other company. They're looking out for their customers. Sure they only do it because they want our continued business, but that's about as ethical as corporations get, so I'm not complaining.

Should all hard drives be encrypted?

RE: Swap File

In most cases the swap file does need to be, at all. With the possible exception for low-end laptops, every computer nowadays has multiple gigs of RAM. How often do you really need to work with more data than that at once anyway?

Encrypted or not, disks are already much slower than RAM. If you're using the disk as memory either something is really wrong, or you just don't care about performance.

School secretly snapped 1000s of students at home

"financial and other reasons"

That's what it says. I don't know what "other reasons" there were, but apparently the primary reason was financial. Presumably meaning they are afraid (perhaps rightly) that the settlement from such a lawsuit could bankrupt the school.

While I can see where they're coming from, I don't much like that line of reasoning. It reminds me of the "too big to fail" justification for the bank bailouts. People in positions of power have to be held accountable somehow. I would rather put up with a little temporary disruption than let them hide behind that excuse indefinitely.

McAfee sued over third-party pop-up pitches

$4.95

$4.95 every month billed to who knows how many unsuspecting people? I would hope that could land you in court.

Wikifounder reports Wikiparent to FBI over 'child porn'

re: "thoughtcrime"

But unlike regular obscenity laws (which are despicable enough) this law criminalizes not only publication, but mere possession of certain drawings. And drawings, just like words, are nothing but thoughts in fixed form. If you took the same bunch of pixels/ink rearranged them to represent a different thought would it still be illegal? Of course not.

And so, I don't think it's unfair at all to call it a thoughtcrime.

London cops focus on extreme porn, human trafficking

Trafficking = Transportation

That's what it actually means. Anybody you tries to tell you different is playing mind games.

Facebook rejects CEOP 'panic button' demands (again)

Amazingly Patient

The only good thing about putting a link in their security center is that now they can threaten to remove it if CEOP keep harassing them. Facebook has been amazingly patient with this idiot. If I would have told him to f*** off it a long time ago.