Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"its clear that if HTC buy a million of X component, will make sure have access to the driver source code."
But typically under NDAs; the chipmakers aren't stupid. It's one thing for a chip manufacturer to share trade secrets with a major partner, but implying this should cause the code to be released before all and sundry is too far of a stretch.
The manufacturers DON'T WANT open interfaces. For them, it's vendor lock-in, and since the phone market relies heavily on integration (SoCs, etc.), the "roll your own" element that helps drive open standards isn't there. So the manufacturers will jealously guard their trade secrets, much as nVidia and AMD keep their cutting-edge GPU driver code in blobs (so as to prevent sneaking peeks).
"Even within the Android ecosystem manufacturers can create brand loyalty. Samsung owners will buy newer Samsung devices if they think they will get better support than HTC and vice versa. It's harder to do, but it still worth the effort."
Not when brand loyalty is too mercurial. Put it this way. One bad story and plenty of once-loyal customers will jump ship. Then there are people like me who have NO brand loyalty. I jumped from HTC to Samsung,but only on a consideration of features at the time. Should I need a new phone, the process will repeat. Since Google provides the common ground for Android, there's little need to stick with a particular brand unless you REALLY like their specific offerings (and no, I don't--I junked TouchWiz and installed a custom ROM pretty quick).
At least Apple has the closest we have to a captive market. If you wanna keep your apps and so on, you MUST stick with Apple. Plus since Apple controls BOTH the hardware AND the software, they can afford to milk their older phones with the app revenues. Since (IMBW) none of the handset makers run their own app markets, milking isn't an option.
"Well sure, unknowns can kill you, but until it has presented itself it is a mere possibility, not an actual threat. You can't prepare, or even begin to prepare, for possibilities, for unknowns, you simply don't know how. By attempting the impossible you are reducing the effect of your defensive resources."
Two words: contingency planning. Learn to expect the unexpected.
"The other type of existential threat is the kind on which you have no input or control. In your Cold War example there was precisely zero you could do about that. Nothing."
That's assuming helplessness, but we can't think that way. Because, while the threat exists, it's hard to tell whether or not we CAN or CANNOT influence the threat. Indeed, in the Cold War, many times the actions of each side caused reactions on the OTHER side, giving concrete evidence of having an influence.
Ever heard the phrase, "What you DON'T know can kill you"? Just because you don't know of a threat doesn't remove it as a threat. A snake in the grass, a hidden hole in the ground, a sniper on the roof. If it can hurt or kill you, it's a threat regardless of your knowledge of it. And think about how the Cold War played out: two superpowers each staring at an existential threat in the opponent. Existential threats trip human instinct and there's basically no way we know to defuse that.
"You defend against the known and maintain agility and extra capacity to deal with unknowns. Defending against and unknown is the height of folly, cause it's unknown you know..."
The trouble is, what if every threat against you, known AND unknown, is EXISTENTIAL? The one threat that's no holds barred is the existential threat: deal with it or die, no exceptions.
""Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Thing is, when you do the same thing over and over and ACTUALLY GET a different result, you're praised for your persistence.
"You kept up with everyone else, so there was a balance. You also knew who could be trusted with sensitive information and who could be relied on to gossip to anyone who would listen. You had a reasonable expectation of privacy."
But when the community is small enough or connected enough, then it's hard to hide things from ANYONE because SOMEONE with loose lips will notice and spread the word. The very FACT you were trying to cover things up DREW attention to you. Before it was the rumor mill, then it was the tabloids, now it's the Internet.
"Privacy is the most fundamental protection an individual has. Without it all other protections, rights and freedoms are as good as worthless."
Well, what happened back in the old days when there was basically no expectation of privacy because everyone in the community kept up with you?
Not necessarily. A dock that can connect a phone to an HDTV can just as easily hook you up to a mouse and keyboard. That's how laptop docks work, and with a little polish, the same can be done with smartphones. The main obstacle is a standardized way of doing this breakout, as most phones only have the one USB port, and AFAIK you can't do MHL, USB OTG, AND recharging simultaneously on the one port, so an alternative is needed. Perhaps using wireless display casting and Bluetooth for the mouse and keyboard, leaving the port free for charging (perhaps use that as a triggering mechanism), and this is just one idea.
"To be crystal clear about my point - no one in the world give a slightest damn about Linux desktops, let alone their sandpit wars. Get over it and buy a Mac if you can't stand Windows."
And if I hate Windows AND Mac AND routinely work in graphics so need a GUI no matter what?
Didn't the article mention docks as a possible way for mobile devices to bridge the gap and become PCs (complete with mice and keyboards) one they become powerful enough (almost there IMO--more and more full-fat retail games are appearing on Android).
"As for coke and meths well they should be marketed like champagne and vodka. Cocaine is very popular in the USA and certain British politicians."
The trouble is these some of these drugs can have side effects: FATAL ones. Cocaine can cause fatal heart attack and certain opiates like heroin can cause your heart to stop. In ONE controlled dose. I think even Ecstasy can do that in one pill. Drugs that can kill when used as directed MUST be controlled for the same reason we control uses of strong acids and the like: they're life-threatening.
"All drugs should be controlled. I believe we should have stronger controls on alcohol as one of the most dangerous, addictive and socially harmful drugs available."
But also SO ingrained in many cultures that people would sooner declare war on their countries than declare war on their vices. Look at America's Prohibition era. If people want something badly enough, they'll get it in spite of God, Man, or the Devil. That's why the US hasn't even tried anything serious with tobacco: it's in the same boat.
"the crowd sourced gatherings that we have seen in the mid-east, just might have to resort to 60's style communications to get a decent protest into action. And no one will be able to video it... when the authorities brick all the phones in the area !!"
You forget. THEY control the NETWORK. The most common tactic they use in such a case is blackouts. What's to say they also don't OTA updates with spyware built into them?
Yes, my WALLET. And since it's UNpowered, there's sod all that can be done to "killswitch" a wallet.
Besides, what's to stop thieves from carrying faraday bags to block any killswitch signals? Then they can switch it to airplane mode through the bag or take it to a faraday cage to download all the stuff at their leisure, flash a new firmware that doesn't respond to the killswitch (and probably includes malware backdoors so they can double-dip), and THEN fence it, confident it won't brick.
"Even if it could store megapixel images in a single byte it would never displace jpeg, because saving space or bandwidth for images is a problem that no longer exists in today's world. The inevitable patents, and even if made freely available, inevitable patent trolls who will claim patents on various things it does, make switching from jpeg to something new not worth whatever storage/bandwidth could be saved."
Thing is, if you ALREADY have patents for the tech when the trolls come knocking, you can use them as a defense and threaten a patent war. That's what Google did against MPEG-LA concerning VP8 tech. With defensive patents, you can threaten to invalidate the troll patents, and if your primary mode of business isn't patent-related, you have more lenient winning conditions than the trolls: all you have to do is not lose, giving you an advantage if the fight goes to court as a mutual nullification doesn't hurt you.
I think that's one reason PNG was accepted over GIF--when the LZW codec used by GIF was enforced, sentiment swung towards PNG which used the more-lenient Deflation (trading off animation for RGB color support).
Which was why I mentioned Google. They're in a unique position to be able to (a) simultaneously saturate both the browser and mobile markets with the tech thanks to Chrome and Android, respectively, and (b) not really the type to patent troll: only using patents defensively and getting their revenues in other ways.
"Of course, they then took this further, realising that, as the source of information was seemingly voltage regulation, there should be ways to measure this more directly. In one of their experiments they get the same information from connecting a voltage probe to a CAT5 cable connected to a switch - at the switch end."
That's an interesting feat, given that CAT5 cables are UNshileded (being a UTP cable).
"I think perhaps you need to realise there are other phones on the market other than ones made by Apple and a good number of them do indeed have normal removable batteries."
I think perhaps you need to realise that companies OTHER than Apple are building phones with permanent batteries. Recent phones from the likes of HTC and Motorola spring to mind. Indeed, due to a demand for more battery life (and, if you're paranoid, a desire to steal control away from users), more phone manufacturers are doing this. I personally don't trust this (I insist on being able to yank a battery in case of a sleeplock or wakelock), but consumers aren't the only voice in the matter, and the consumer doesn't always win in this market.
(JOKE RIPOSTE) I think that's the plan. If it's so transparent the hackers see THROUGH it, they can't see the cipher data meaning they don't know where to hack. Encryption where my data becomes invisible would be rather nice IMO (END)
But seriously, the easiest way to get data encrypted on a widespread basis is to make the process turnkey simple, and a transparent (automatic on-the-fly) process can be a step in the right direction if done properly.
As for the paranoia, you might wanna just wring your hands of the whole affair. Let's face it; few things have as much resources as a state, and if ONE state hasn't subverted half the programmers and coders in the world, then the Russians, Chinese, and Arabs have probably polished off the rest. Which basically makes it a case of "Don't Trust Anyone," which means nothing gets done anymore.
Because the tool that can hide you from the government can also be used to subvert and destroy it. That's always been the dilemma of governments that give some sort of liberties: those very liberties can be turned against the government, so the government is basically underpinned on trust. Which becomes more complicated in a country like the United States which was founded on DIStrust of government.
So someone needs to tell as many people as possible that, due to the business models involved (where just ONE trace is all it takes), anonymity has become black-and-white. Either data is untraceably anonymous or it's not anonymous at all: nothing in between.
Makes me think to the general polarization of society in general, to the point that I can't help but think the ultimate outcome will either be NO anonymity (resulting in a police state) or TOTAL anonymity (resulting in anarchy).
Even so, if your client has been pwned without your knowledge (due to a drive-by, for example), they could disguise the fact they stole your key by replacing any DISPLAYS of their key with your original one (false facades are common in malware now). In that event, how would you be able to tell that the key you see is the key you're actually using?
That would just be considered a site hosting a workaround that gets blocked, too. Put it this way. A workaround for a workaround is still a workaround.
Frankly, I think all the tail-chasing is just an exercise to build evidence for whitelisting, which can deny by default.
"all am going to say is look at chinas firewall and your see why filters will not work"
IIRC China's system doesn't outlaw all encrypted traffic and doesn't work on a whitelist system (meaning you can ONLY go to those sites they've vetted, meaning new sites are blocked by default). Without this "deny by default, deny when in doubt" attitude, things will still be able to slip through.
If that were true, it wouldn't be able to block an encrypted connection because encrypted data, by definition, can't be sniffed. Has anyone been hit with a "Site Blocked" message while using HTTPS that's either direct to the IP or using a third-party DNS? If so, then IP checking must be in place at the least (how else would they catch a connection for which the only thing they know is the IP).
In other words, because the average person lacks the desire or capability to think in terms other than black and white, the inevitable outcome of society (ANY society) is polarization into either totalitarianism or anarchy: most likely the former as the latter will likely devolve into the former given time.
"Yes, but HAVEGE originates from a French institute (http://www.irisa.fr/caps/projects/hipsor/index.php) and so is likely to fart in your general direction, you son of silly persons."
It's not like it's being used directly. In Linux, it's used like most other HW generators are: shoveled into the kernel entropy pool where the kernel then does the scrubbing. In that context it's at worst harmless and at best quite useful.
And failing that I can go back to the webcam generator, since I've been monkeying with the code personally, I know what's going on. The original code did plenty of whitening, but in my tests using a cheap webcam with the lens taped over (and just to be sure, it's face-down) it couldn't pass FIPS 180-2 tests until after I gave it a further parity scrub. Beats waiting on an Entropy Key.
The whole business is a classic tradeoff between consolidation and turnaround time. Consolidated delivery centers provide the benefit of lower logistics costs, but now Amazon is seeing the other side of the coin: the fact that people will pay for instant gratification (thus why big boxers like Walmart still work; for some, there's nothing like walking out, goodies in hand, and they feel the added taxes and so on are worth it to get right blanking now), meaning having warehouses closer to the customer costs money but saves time.
To do that, you need a device with DLNA capability. And believe me, I check the specs carefully on those things. Trouble is, many of them have (a) spotty codec support, (b) lousy UIs, or (c) both. The closest thing I've found to a repurposed PC is the WD TV Live, but its video quality leaves plenty to be desired. And no, the Raspberry solution tends to be laggy at high resolutions.
Many "network-enabled" players don't really support DLNA but rather support the "usual suspects" like Pandora and YouTube.
Plus your TV capture cars only supports OTA programming. My programming tends to come through digital cable, requiring a box, so it's more complicated.
But you do. Controlling the acts that give your privacy away is HARD...because SO MANY things give hints as to your identity. It's like the skill needed to do some actual work on your car like changing the oil or swapping wheels: many people don't care about it and let the experts do it, but if you want to do it yourself, it's considered wise to read the manual first lest you break something.
"When polished metals reflect more than 95% of visible and longer wavelength light the only colour which can avoid almost trivial countermeasures is ultra violet."
I think the need to get it to at least 99%. Otherwise, the 5% that DOES get absorbed would deform and defeat the polish, allowing the other 95% back in again to finish it off.
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