Posts by Henry Wertz 1

Adobe releases lengthy list of Apple Lion woes

Various stuff.

@colbygk: Actually, not really, the first couple years of Intel systems were not really a speed upgrade from the G5s (especially the dual processors.) I'm no Apple fanboi, but those G5s flew.

Solution? If you like your G5, but find eventually the supported OSX software is too out of date, then run Ubuntu PPC on it. It runs pretty good even on a ~450mhz G4 so I'm sure it's ridiculous on the G5. It's a little hard to find, since the last "officially supported" version is pretty old, but the current 11.04 is still unofficially supported.

Re:"In today's world of quad+ 8GB+ there is no/none/nada/zero reason to EVER use DLLs on current software." A) Aiming low, trying to make your app just non-bloated enough to barely run by itself on a high-end machine, is pretty much crap. This does happen a lot on Windows, meaning you suddenly need a FAR faster computer to run current Windows software than either mac or Ubuntu/other Linux. B) Still there's a reason to use shared libraries -- security! (and bug fixes) I have had security updates and bug fixes frequently on my Ubuntu systems that involve replacing a library. Not replacing 50 applications, which is what would happen if people did what you want. C) I read your update about this applying to DLLs that only apply to that particular app. I *agree* with that. Although, if they used a proper package manager ala Ubuntu and a bunch of Linux distros, it wouldn't matter since the package manager can cleanly remove or upgrade the app anyway.

Sony insurer says it's not liable for costs of data breach

Really?

I haven't had to file a claim, but my parents have, and didn't have any trouble. Insurance man shows up, "Yep, they whacked your car pretty good, the check's in the mail", simple as that. Ditto for the hail damage to the roof.

Maybe it's different in UK, but here in the US there's a couple cut-rate insurance cos that try to weasel out of paying every claim, or try to use high-mileage junkyard parts for car repairs, and so on, but you avoid those few and the rest are just fine. (I'd call these companys "fly by night", but they've been around for decades.... since people don't file insurance claims real often, they usually pay in for years before they file a claim and realize the insurance co is going to screw them over on it.)

Anyway.. the way I see it, 1) If what the insurance co says is true, it really doesn't sound like this is covered. 2) Since it was revealed that Sony laid off a bunch of their security staff before the breaches happened, that sounds like negligence to me so the insurance co shouldn't have to cover it even if Sony had bought hax0r insurance from them.

On first day, Apple sells 50 Lions for every lion

Rather amazed...

that Rosetta would be dropped. It was already written, and the last PowerPC model was sold less than 5 years ago (August 2006.) I have noticed with MacOS there has been a linear progression for years (at least 10 years) where both the oldest machine it will run on, and oldest software that'll generally run on the OS, have both been decreasing. At present rate by 2015 or so it should run only on brand new systems.

(Apple fanboi notes:

1) Don't flame me. Although this progression is real, I assume it's an artifact of the PPC->x86 transition, and the odd decision of Apple to sell some 32-bit x86 systems (so with 10.7 being 64-bit, it abandons these systems.) I'm taking the piss in assuming 10.8 or 10.9 will only support like 1 or 2 year old systems, then 10.10 supporting 0-year old systems.

2) Don't compare to Windows, pretty much each newer Windows version probably has supported less and less aged systems too, but I find Windows to be a joke, and comparing to it is aiming pretty low. I can say, Ubuntu will run on just about anything going back at least 10 years (I've booted it up on a P3, and the slow stuff like loading the ever-bloated openoffice takes just the same length of time, since it's hard disk bound both on the P3 and the newer system. The CPU usage on the P3 is a lot higher, but not 100% 8-)

Dell's faulty PC legal woes worsen (again)

GX270s were defective. GX260s? Meh.

@Swedish Chef, Dell did and does make lines of machines that are considered "business class" where they make sure they are identical over the life of the machine. If you don't get those lines there's no guarantee of hardware being identical and you really can't complain if it's not. If you don't use Windows it's not a problem, Ubuntu installed identically on the GX110s (Pentium 3) through the newest Dual Core Dells I got to try it on. You're IT guys are making it hard on themselves by using such an obsolete OS.

I won't say the GX270s were "allegedly" defective -- they were defective. Not really Dell's fault but still. We saw well over a 70% failure rate (I'd guess closer to 90%), one or two caps would bulge or blow first, but most had piles of blown caps all over the board. GX260s? I don't know what to say, maybe ours were all older from before Dell sourced the bad caps, maybe the lower clock speed (2.4ghz) saved them (lower heat, lower power demand through the caps) but we only saw about a 5% failure rate on them, out of literally thousands of units.

ANONYMOUS: Behind the mask, inside the Hivemind

Perhaps they are...

@Matt Bryant re saying Anonymous should do some charitable work.. perhaps some of them are.

@Lamont Cranston re: " Really? Would they like to use the n-word, too?" Yes, constantly. You have obviously not been to /b/ if you think otherwise.

@Daegroth, TheRead addresses your concern. There are people who as they say are "strong personalities" but there's a fine line between that and being told to FOAD (F. off and die). Anonymous inherently rejects any leadership or structure.

Something this reminds me of... LOD/H (Legion of Doom/Legion of Hackers) from the 1980s. Look at old Phrack magazines if you want to read about it. So, Legion of Doom were concrete in the beginning, with an specific head ("Lex Luthor" of course), and specific members. But, by the time the original members retired, their exploits were well-known, and anyone who wanted to be 'leet would claim allegiance to the LOD. In the late 1980s the feds tried a crackdown on hackers and phone phreakers in general, and one or two self-professed LOD members got caught up in this. The feds just couldn't figure out what the hell was going on, as many LOD members as they knew must exist they figured there must be cells and a leader, and just couldn't comprehend it was completely decentralized.

Councils and police to publish speed camera data

Here too

University Heights police will ticket people for going 1MPH over the speed limit. Of course this is contrary to policy of at least 5MPH over to ticket to allow for both speedometer and radar gun inaccuracy (in Iowa, the police are NOT required to every calibrate the radar guns!) I know there are a few locations as well where the police will wait feet before both speed reductions (catching people not braking fast enough) and speed increases (catching people who accelerate mere feet before the speed limit increase.) And of course, the sitting at the bottom of hills, that's common too (at the same time the city worries about how people should save gasoline, they put speed traps at the bottom of hills with no intersection down there, so people can waste all that momentum and have to hit the gas going up the other side, and set the stop lights so people have to stop every single block.)

@AC 16:05GMT, ACPO policy is 100% irrelevant. Ticketing at 1MPH over, and sitting right at a speed limit change to ticket, are against policy here too. Policies are not rules, and the police feel free to ignore "policies" that reduce their numbers. And, sure ACPO would show up at a camera meeting, if they wish.

You have to have standards – or do you?

US measurements and standards

Field Marshal Von Krakenfart, you make it sound worse than it is. Not that I should be defending the nonsensical system we use in the US... but, links, rods, chains, and furlongs were based on using a chain as measurement (I'm not sure who used this). A link was the length of one link on the chain, and I assume the chain the length of the whole chain. Fathoms, cables, and knots were used navally and are rope-based; a knot would be tied in the rope at a certain distance apart, rope run out into the water, and the knots counted (a knot is 1 nautical mile per hour.)

Links, rods, chains, and furlongs are not mixed with fathoms, cables, and nautical miles and these are not mixed with inches, feet, yards, and miles. I've never heard the term "thou", we just call them thousandths of an inch. Although, in keeping with twisted units, most smaller stuff (well, bolts and sockets) are half inch, quarter inch, sixteenth inch, with less used 32nd inch and 64th inch (rather than being given in 1/1000th of an inch). It's real entertaining to realize "oh the three eighths doesn't fit, I must need a seven sixteenth."

Anyway... standards by law simply are no good. An example, internet protocols. No government intervention there. What did governments come up with? X.25, which worked certainly but wouldn't have allowed most of what the internet amounts to today. And ISO/OSI, which many have heard of as the 7 layer model, but you may not even be aware they tried to come up with a networking standard in the 1980s. It failed completely.

Policies pushing for governments THEMSELVES to use standards are not necessarily a bad thing -- for instance, records from years back would be much easier to read now if they were in a RTF (Rich Text Format) than if they are in Wordperfect, AmiPro, or indeed even older Word format. At present, ODF would be a good way to go. I don't think any SPECIFIC format should be set in stone (legally) since the lawmakers would be too slow to react if some format suddenly "went out of favor" (for instance I doubt they'd want to STILL be using RTF now, but if it were enshrined in law they probably would be.)

Groupon faces multitude of legal headaches in US

My 2 cents (200 coupons cash value)

@AC, i get Groupon ads on my Droid 2 Global.... for Minneapolis/St. Paul. Which is like 300 miles away.

Anyway.. the Groupons being worth cash is not too big a problem. Coupons have been like this for as long as I can remember.. they are listed as having a cash value of 1/100th of 1 cent. And to redeem them, they have to be physically mailed somewhere (so, shipping costs exceed the cash value the mailer would receive.) In other words, a law that is on the books but fairly worthless.

As for the rest? I really don't know. I mean, "brick and mortar" retailers have national campaigns involving coupons all the time, I assume there is a general set of guidelines that don't run afoul of laws in most locations, and probably in the rest they just say the coupons are invalid. I won't be surprised if they don't technically run afoul of rules in other locations and they are just never called out on it. How compatible are these with Groupon? No idea.

Number-crunching in the Cloud

credit default swaps and clouds

"...far more rigorously audited than very similar processes on much the same machines that only very recently rolled up millions of sub-prime mortgages into slick collateralised debt obligations?"

I'd like to point out, I read an interview of the creator of the derivative software used for credit default swaps. He TOLD the guys at the first firm to use this software they were abusing it until they fired him. He told the NEXT place he worked at that they were also misusing it, they ignored him too. He did point out if it makes you feel any better, that most of his benefits were in the form of shares that dropped to ~$0 when these companies collapsed. The companies were flat-out told that a derivative with an average of 1% defaults per year over 100 years DOESN'T MEAN 1% defaults a year, it means near-0% defaults most of the time with high 20%+ default rates every so often. Which is exactly what happened, they laughed all the way to the bank for several years of near-0 defaults then acted like it was a surprise to everyone involved when high default rates wiped them out.

Anyway... spreadsheets pulling data in from all over really are an abomination. Too easy to change the formulas and such operating on one, and the people that make them tend to not follow any "best practices".. at the very least, the "code" and data should be widely seperated so someone doesn't accidentally alter the code, but I don't see people even doing that.

"Cloud?" No solution there --

1) Moving calculations away from local systems doesn't solve anything.

2) Additional data can be gotten from the internet (not "the cloud") but this data is unstructured so it's not going to just flow into some spreasheet, database, or application the way sales figures and such would. This can lead to severe misinterpretations of data. For example, perhaps someone decides brand awareness is good, and writes an app to find out how many times their name is mentioned per day. "FropCo" was tweeted 50,000 times? Fabulous! 49,975 of those were "FropCo sucks?" Not so good, but they won't know that if automated software does all the work. As I say, online data is unstructured.

Microsoft commits to Windows makeover for Node.js

Erosion avoidance

I think /\/\j17 called it. If Microsoft thinks they are going to get people to go from Linux to Windows they are delusional. But it reduces one source of erosion in user base (people wanting to run node.js, and presumably finding there's not a package of it for Windows.)

DRM-free music dream haunts Apple's app-store lock-in

Lockin solution? Free apps

A few comments:

1) I don't see divergence as a problem in the least. I assume running the same app on two devices involves two purchases. So, at that point, it doesn't matter if they are two IPhones or one IPhone and one Android phone.

2) Solution to lockin? Don't buy so many apps. No way in hell I'd switch to an IPhone, but repurchasing apps is not a reason for me not to do it. I've got one ~$8 or so app; at least on Android supply of apps that may show a little ad when running but are free (or the choice of paying and not having the little ad.)

3) As for the bit about Apple's "solution" via HTML5, yeah, don't even pretend that is something Apple "invented". Any IPhone or smartphone can load up a web page with plenty of Javascript on it and have been able to for years, and I know IPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm can all make an icon that goes straight to it too. The new thing is Apple trying to make a cash grab on subscriptions and suggesting web apps as a "solution".

Not monopolistic behavior

Vendor lockin is one aspect of it, and Apple does lock people in.

But, monopolists (like Microsoft) also "play dirty" to knock competitors out of the market.

Apple has not dropped IPhone prices to try to banrkupt competitors then when they are gone raise prices up to normal (Microsoft did this with Word and Office to knock Lotus, Wordperfect Corp, etc. out of business.)

They don't have contracts requiring AT&T to pay a royalty on every phone sold (as Microsoft has done, putting clauses in contracts where both OEMs and enterprise customers will have to pay Microsoft for *every* computer, even if it's running MacOS or Linux).

Finally, part of monopolistic behavior depends on market share -- a vendor who is dominant in a market is monopolistic for doing certain behaviors while in a competitive market the same behaviors are merely competitive.

As much as Apple fanbois want IPhone without the consequences of Jobses control freakery.. well, tough shit. There are numerous competitors that do not have the lockdowns the IPhone does. I would never by an IPhone for exactly the reasons you guys are complaining are monopolistic.. they are not monopolistic in the least, but I still wouldn't buy a product from a company with those kinds of attitudes, so I don't.

Bitcoin collapses on malicious trade

I've been curious about that...

What backs bitcoins? I mean, i know USD are not backed by anything either, that Euros are not backed by anything, and so on. But, I cannot obtain hardware and start generating dollars or Euros either. People can earn Bitcoins just by doing computations? And, apparently, not even factoring primes or something that may have some cryptographic purpose but just generating hashes with arbitrary properties? This seems supremely odd to me.

A cloud hangs over the sysadmin

No worries

@Pete 2, re :"In the 70s it would have been about minicomputers"

Those WERE a big deal back in the day. From what I've gathered, plenty of companies had a well-entrenched "data processing" department by the 1970s, who expected any computing jobs to be batched up and submitted to them. If they embraced (or at least didn't oppose..) minicomputers and desktop PCs, they kept their position of importance within the company. If they did not (as many didn't) they became quite marginalized, or even eliminated entirely, as departments independently installed their own minis and micros, and the DP guys simply got fewer and fewer jobs submitted to them. Of course, with Windows and it's complexities and security problems, there are IT departments now in general, but in many cases it was formed from scratch.

Anyway.. I'm relatively unconcerned. "Cloud computing" = virtualization + machines in a data center + lots and lots of hype. Fair enough, in general I think I'd keep that on-site personally, but if some boss insisted on using hosted machines, OK it saves the time of physically installing and maintaining some boxen (which, in ordinary cases shouldn't be a large percentage of what one is doing anyway.). As for automation tools, well, this won't let anyone get rid of IT either, because the end users won't know how to use the automation tools either. I would hope most IT types would have the most repetitive tasks automated already, but *shrug* maybe not.

Apple seeks anti-snoop display patent

Prototype? Nah.

@frank ly and Steve X, nope, there doesn't have to be a working prototype. Even worse, at least here in the US, it seems patents don't even need to have a description of how a prototype would probably be built anymore. People will come up with these ideas, patent them, without the vaguest clue on how the patent would POSSIBLY be implemented. So then, by the time some actually, you know, INVENTS something, it's absolutely coated in patents. Damned unfortunate.

This specific patent is at least REASONABLY detailed, but I do feel like at least a 1-pixel prototype should be, if not built, then at least schematic'ed out specifically. I'm working on a provisional patent and I "practice what I preach" -- I have a fully functional reference implementation.

FBI fights to protect ISPs that snoop on their customers

They broke the law. And a call to action

@oopsie, yep, warrantless wiretapping is illegal. And you know what? The former CEO of Qwest was approached and asked to do this, *TOLD* them this was illegal and he refused to participate. In retaltation, charges were trumped up regarding insider trading (really, someone with millions of dollars, and the claim was he was doing insider training to make like an extra $1,000 or so) so he was removed as CEO and tossed in jail. In adidition, several telecom contracts were suddenly cancelled at this point. This is the worst thing about this, and this push for "immunity" for the companies that broke the law -- some DIDN'T break the law, so really those who did do not deserve immunity.

Seriously though -- ISPs that are braking the law should 100% be exposed for doing this. It is not the FBIs job to help companies maintain market share.

This is a call to action, if you work at an ISP that is participating in this program, go to cryptome or wikileaks and let everyone know. The public deserves to know. If you figure out how to determine this is happening (without working at the ISP), do the same, make this public knowledge.

Apple reportedly plans ARM shift for laptops

Good idea

"I did a quick survey of the make of machines in use in the cafe. Two out of the three times Apple MacBooks came out at over 50% share, the other time at 40% share. Total sample size is now probably about 50 machines, so statistically significant.

What does this say?"

Absolutely nothing. If I go to a redneck beer-drinking-and-fishing hangout, I can "prove" that 90% of the population drives Ford pickup trucks.

-------------------

That said, moving to an ARM would be a smart move. They have superior power use (something like 1 watt at 1.2ghz), the modern designs do have a pretty strong FPU, they have "Neon" instruction set and a DSP which do virtually all video decoding work (it can decode videos using about 30mhz of processing power, and that is without using any video decoding support of the video chip.) A lot of OSX is heavily multithreaded, it'd be real easy to stick 8 or more dual-core ARM CPUs into a notebook, and still use less than the power budget of the existing Intel processor.

"If you recompile OSX for ARM64 and you keep the APIs identical, why would you need to emulate anything for additional software?"

The CPU must be emulated, a program is not just a string of API calls. CPU emulation technology is good but this can still be a significant slowdown. Of course, you are right though, none of the other hardware has to be emulated a bit. (Although I haven't tried it...) qemu for Linux can do exactly this -- for instance, put some Linux for Intel libraries and binaries on an ARM, and run them on the ARM... most system calls are the same, and qemu can "convert" a few platform-specific ones (usually different for historical reasons).

OSX supports "FAT" binaries (inherited from NextStep) -- these are binaries that contain, potentially, SPARC, Motorola 68K, PA-RISC, Motorola 68K, PowerPC, Intel, and (probably already) ARM code in a single binary (probably the Mach-O file format already has ARM support, since iOS is a mutant OSX).

So, if Apple flubs it you'll end up with these Macs that "can" support native code, but actually are constantly running everything under emulation, not getting the performance it should. If they do moderately well, by the time the ARM machiunes ship they can at least make sure video playback support and Apple's own apps use NEON and any available DSP (ARM video acceleration for instance, very effective)) *and* supports whatever video acceleration the video chip supports. If they get it right, they will release ASAP XCode, gcc, etc. that support Intel + ARM "FAT" binaries, as app makers rebuild the apps they naturally gain ARM support*, so by the time the ARM machines ship a fair amount of software can be ARM native.

*I've run Linux distros on PA-RISC, PowerPC (Mac) *and* an IBM POWER system, DEC Alpha, as well as Intel, I have a command-line only Debian install on my (ARM) phone too. None of these feel like a stripped down port, portable code is portable. I think most apps will be similar going from Intel OSX to ARM OSX, it'll just be a matter of hitting "build project" or whatever, not some troublesome porting process.

Insurance firm pushes out iPhone app that rates driving ability

Is it good or not?

Let's see what the IPhone app says... oh, I missed the apex on turn 3. I should have accelerated harder out of the 5th corner. More E-Brake on that last corner, I lost too much speed on the drift. Yes, when I see them mentioning an app that "improves" driving, all I can think of is World Rally Championship haha.

But seriously -- I'm not at all sure what to think of this kind of app, and the recorders that one or two insurance companies here already have. Some people could use driver training for sure. I was quite alarmed driving through Coloardo to see people with these horrible huge SUVs that (unknown to them I think) were going around the mountain roads so fast they were hopping onto two wheels (they were not driving excessively fast FOR A CAR, but were for a bloated top-heavy SUV apparently.).

But, these boxes do not have situational awareness -- there are some onramps here where you DO have to accelerate hard to get onto the interstate, one in particular is pretty bad, traffic is heavy and visibility is poor until right at the end of the ramp, at which point there's no more room to accelerate... so you have to get up to AT LEAST the speed of traffic by the end so you can find a gap in traffic. Will I be marked down for merging safely, instead of trying to wander into 75MPH traffic at 45MPH? Probably, because "I'm accelerating hard". (No, I don't use this as an excuse to gun it up every ramp, in case you wondered.) Will driving down a curvy road cause demerits compared to one that is straight, because I'm cornering? Probably. Will the app or recorder give demerits for the truly dangerous and annoying action of right turning on red in front of the traffic that has a green light, then not bothering to accelerate to match it's speed? Probably not, it'll consider it GOOD because that's light acceleration. I had a situation where a semi veered out of it's lane (and there was a cement barricade to the other side of me), I had to brake HARD to not get squished (from ~70+MPH to about 30) then in a moment when the semi moved back, accelerate hard so the ~70+MPH traffic behind me did not either rear end me or also have to go hard on the brake. A system like this would give HUGE demerits for that, but with situational awareness it was the best move. Some people will be chuffed to find they get demerits for having to slam on the brakes because a deer run out in front of the car. I'm very concerned that with a system like this, someone would hesitate to brake and accelerate hard (to avoid demerits), and so cause either an accident or near-accident where there wouldn't have been one otherwise.

Ohio cops taze naked marathoneer

Ugh, gross

Quoted from the Urbana Daily Citizen article:

"This is something that happens and is tolerated in the running culture, along with runners who sometimes (urinate) or defecate during a race. Shouldn't that be considered indecent exposure, too, if what I did was indecent? In fact, running naked was encouraged in a marathon I ran in San Francisco, so I don't know why this was such a big deal."

At least he was picked up before he decided to take a crap in someone's yard (or do you just pinch a loaf right in the middle of the road, and let the other marathoners run around it?)

CEOP accused of misleading public over site security fail

Frankly...

the lack of https use is not great, but it is to their credit that they at least fixed it quickly once they were told about it. They should have run SSL from the start, but realistically I do assume the "man in the middle" is much more likely to be looking for credit card numbers and bank account info than looking for use of CEOP web site.

On the other hand, saying it was only unencrypted when coming from Facebook or Google is a flat-out lie, and that is pretty inexcusable.

Pakistani IT admin leaks bin Laden raid on Twitter

News travels fast

"Yes, but... ...did anyone really notice until after the "real" news reports? If a story is broken but there is no-one to hear it, does it matter?"

Yes. I got a text from a friend of mine at 9:56 PM central time (10:56 eastern) on May 1 with the news. By the time the so-called "real" news mentioned it, I'd already had the news for 19 hours.

Microsoft to release Windows thin PC in late June

Bloooooated

"Is the Windows 7 Bloat that bad these days?"

Yes. It takes boatloads of disk space and buckets of RAM. Objective reviews have shown it to really not be much better than Vista in this regards, it's just that (high end) system specs jumped enough in the intervening years to make Windows users not complain about the bloat as much.

Ubuntu is considered bloated among Linux distros, and it'll run comfortably in 512MB of RAM, and fit on a 4GB disk with room to spare (and keep in mind, the Ubuntu install includes OpenOffice and some other applications, it'd increase Windows' footprint even more to throw on the comparable applications.) Of course, if you just want a glorified terminal or web browsing box, Damn Small Linux fits in 100MB of disk space and actually runs well in 64MB of RAM. PuppyLinux is more fully featured, but still fits in 100-200MB of disk space (depending on version) and 128MB of RAM.

"Is the cost of a 40Gb HDD really so extortionate?"

A 40 Gb hard drive won't hold Win7, 40 gigabits is only 5GB. A 40GB HD (or whatever the smallest one can actually buy any more) is cheap. A 32GB SSD is expensive enough that if I spent for one, I'd rather use that space for my files and not to squeeze on a gigantic OS and apps. If it was some fixed-purpose usage, I'd much rather get something like a 4GB one.

So, the target for this is probably organizations that buy boatloads of computers (and will not take the radical route of using actual thin clients and Linux Terminal Server Project or if they are Windows-centric Terminal Server or Citrix.)

When I worked at the University's surplus, a large portion of the computers were from the university hospital. The university hospital special-ordered Dells with *no* sound (the sound was onboard, but Dell would subtract some small amount per unit and just not install any audio jacks), CD readers instead of burners or DVDs (and sometimes no CD drive at all), smaller than stock hard disks and probably less RAM than stock (they kept running Windows 2000 for a loooong time). When you're buying lots of 100 or even 1000 PCs at a time, this fiddly stuff adds up to tens of thousands of dollars saved.

Hacker pwns police cruiser and lives to tell tale

uplink speeds

"I am impressed that Verizon's network can support live streaming from a PVR. Would be nice to get that kind of HSUPA bandwidth in London."

Well, Verizon's not a GSM carrier, they are using CDMA (for voice, and EDGE-style low speed data fallback) and EVDO (for 3G, data only). EVDO looks antiquated on paper -- 3.1mbps down, 1.8mbps up peak. But, it's pretty common to actually CONSISTENTLY get 50% of this peak.

Partially VZW spends huge wads of cash on their network (adding backhaul, adding additional capacity, they are pretty careful about network tuning).

Partially, since the CDMA and EVDO channels are only 1.25mhz down and 1.25mhz up, they can fire up another EVDO channel more easily.. for instance, with 20mhz of spectrum, they have room for 8 channels total. Since HSPA uses a 5mhz width, a GSM carrier with 20mhz has a choice of all GSM/EDGE, 1 channel of HSPA and the rest GSM, or 2 channels of HSPA but having to shut down GSM/EDGE entirely. (In reality, the likes of VZW or AT&T have more like 60mhz of 850mhz + 1900mhz in big cities, but it still makes things easier).

And partially, to be honest, Qualcomm has crack engineers, they are good about considering real-world RF conditions and not just ideal lab conditions.

VZW's now rolling out LTE in the 700mhz band. Peak speeds of 60mb/sec; of course nobody gets that speed, but I've seen a couple speed tests of 35-40mbps (uncommon though), some at about 25mbps, and plenty at 15-20mbps. Worst case seems to be 6-10mbps. VZW did tests under load, and say to expect 5-12mbps. Since this is pretty new I seriously doubt the PD is using LTE already. Obviously, that'd stream a DVR pretty easily.

I did notice..

when I was dicking around with Kismet years ago (long enough ago that there weren't just dozens of networks on every block) that our local PD, every squad car had at least one device continually searching for a some fixed SSID (it had "PD" in it so that made it easy to spot.) I was rather curious how secure they were against a machine with HostAP, a DHCP server, and nmap.

Honestly, my guess was "not very", that it was probably designed with the assumption that the only network with that SSID would be it's home network.

By the time wifi came out, I was well past the age for youthful indescretions, so I have not tried to find out.

Google intros video chat on Android

No bill shock here...

in the US unless someone has the ever shitty AT&T, they got rid of their unlimited plan quite a while back and are now the only national carrier without an unlimited plan of any type.. Nexus S is usually on T-Mobile, they are unlimited (reportedly throttle at 1GB but no overage charges). Sprint is truly unlimited. Verizon is unlimited, although they "reserve the right" to throttle at 5GB (and reportedly, in actuality start throttling at 9GB, if the user is on a busy cell site.) (None of the 4 have unlimited tethering/aircard plans though, except Sprint which allows unlimited aircard data on 4G (Wimax) while the 3G is still subject to cash overages.)

Anyway, sounds cool. Although, my camera is on the back and the screen on the front.. so...

Wikileaks: Canadian piracy arrests were favor to movie biz man

Made up laws?

"The fact that the RCMP is not usually arresting cammers does not mean they should never do it."

Yes it does, it is the police's job to enforce the law. There's no laws against camming in Canada. It's as simple as that. I would not want my local police making up their own laws they'll decide to enforce, and if you think about it I don't think you would either.

Anyway, as a few others have said, I think the overdose is a non-issue ... I mean, it's a shame, but nobody forces a drug abuser to overdose. (Well, OK, I'm sure once in a while someone's knocked off that way). But, the police should absolutely not be doing personal favors for anyone, particularly when it goes beyond law enforcement to repeatedly arresting someone who ISN'T breaking the law. THAT is a big deal.

Legal goons threaten researcher for reporting security bug

That's what one gets..

for following the so-called "responsible disclosure" procedures. He should have just released his research straight up.

"Somebody explain to me.... How the great IT populace as a whole benefits if this person reveals details on how to exploit a vulnerability?"

No, I will not. If you believe withholding information is a good idea I won't convince you otherwise. You are wrong though.

Natty Narwahl: Ubuntu marine mammal not fully evolved

Developers versus users

"When will developers realise that the one thing users hate more than anything is being used as a proving ground for incomplete or bug ridden software."

The same time end users realize there are long term releases that specifically avoid this situation.

Anyway.. I have no idea if I'll like Unity or not. But so what? That's why there's a choice of window managers and desktop environments. Just like how ppl in the Windows world could choose a 2000-style interface if they didn't like XPs, and can choose probably both 2000 or XP style interfaces if they did not like Vistas or 7's.

Amazon cloud fell from sky after botched network upgrade

Mainframe-level fault tolerance? Nope.

@Robert E A Harvey, nope, people don't generally do these kinds of tests any more. In fact, a lot of IT people seem to be quite cavalier about their setups (if they do backups and failover at all, they not only don't test it, but don't even look over the overall design to see if it would theoretically work -- apparently, including Amazon). Of course, the fact that there is not really comprehensive information on how one would make all the bits and pieces tie together, as there is in the mainframe world, does not help in this. And for the most part those IT professionals who would plan to this degree and like to do some kind of tests of various failure modes are unable to due to budgetary and time constraints.

Although I have not been an operator on a mainframe, I've looked into mainframe architecture, as compared and contrasted to current "cloud computing", virtual machine setups, and so on. In general, the "state of the art" is about where the mainframe was circa late 1960s... the pieces are all there, and it generally works but the bugs have not been worked out yet (Although, it does vary -- there have been systems like the Sun Enterprise 10000, a.k.a. Sun Starfire, that are much more fault tolerant than just using some regular machines.)

Beyoncé sued over aborted videogame deal

Wasn't going to happen...

If they thought they were going to sell $100 million worth of games just on Beyonce's name, well, I don't think that was possibly going to happen. It's a shame the investors pussed out just over some celebrity endorsement though, if the game was any good it would have stood on it's own.

Royal guests free to tweet and hang out with Facebook friends

Well...

First, I wonder if the network will collapse anyway. One call and 4 texts? During, what, a multi-hour event? I won't expect huge numbers of *calls* (especially in the church, how rude would that be??), but I won't be surprised by loads of texts and data use (both actual internet data, and picture and video messaging data).

Second... what's with all this talk like nobody was rude before Facebook and Twitter? For instance, at the last royal wedding, was there really nobody using cameras and camcorders at that point? (I realize, camcorders were uncommon and bulky, but not non-existant.) It seems to me that would be more conspicuous and thus ruder than banging out some text on a phone.

Vote now for the best sci-fi film never made

Not bad choices

I haven't actually read the (dominant) top two choices, but based on wikipedia summaries they sound like they would be good as movies.

I chose A Canticle for Liebowitz, it would be kind of a downer but I think it'd make a good movie. I actually would *love* to see Neuromancer or Snowcrash as movies, but I think it is FAR too likely anyone making them into a movie now would royally f*** them up to possibly vote for them.

YouTube to launch paid video-on-demand service

Hmm..

I wonder if the video on demand movie service will go over as well as the movie rental? Which despite using Youtube frequently I've never heard of.

Save the planet: Stop the Greens

Environmentalists here in the US

Have been putting out ads on local television opposing the building of a "dangerous new nuclear plant." Ignoring entirely the fact that the new nuclear plant is 1) A modern, safe design. 2) The *existing* reactor is one of the infamous GE Mark Is, it'd actually be safest to build an *extra* new reactor and shut down the Mark I compared to keeping it running through the 2030s, which is the plan now.

Amazon fine print limits potential credits for cloud outage

Partly cloudy with a chance of outages

@William Boyle re: "I can't imagine that Amazon invested anything near that level of resource in the EC2 cloud infrastructure.". Well that's the thing, people see these services as being so great because the price is so low. You get what you pay for, economies of scale can drive prices down some, but so can cutting corners.

(Obviously, for this, I don't have actual quotes, that is for effect...)

So, does the storage use RAID, does it have some kind of backups of any type? "Don't worry about it, it's a cloud." Is there any redundancy in the networking with in the building? "It's a cloud, you don't need to know that." What about external connectivity? "Well, this cloud connects to the Internet." What about power? "It's a cloud, leave that to us."

I don't really think Amazon is necessarily skimping on any of this stuff. But, that is the thing, if you go with any conventional hosting provider, you will get a real SLA, you will get as much hard info as you want about what type of storage you have (plain disks, RAID, maybe even some off-site backups), what kind of power setup (power conditioning, battery backup, generator, etc.), if there's redundancy on the internal networking or not, if there are redundant outside connections, and if your provider provides the possibility of distributing between multiple physical data centers. You can find out what kind of physical machine you are on if you pay for a dedicated one, and in genreal how many virtual servers are stuck onto a physical machine if you are on a shared server. Of course, you can skimp and get some provider where the answer is "best effort SLA, no backups, no power backup, no network redundancy, and as many virtual servers as they can cram on each physical server" but then at least you know that, instead of just being told "Well, it's cloud, don't worry about it."

Yahoo! Finds! Buyer! For! Doomed! Delicious!

Where's the benjamins?

On the one hand, I wouldn't think this type of system should be too expensive to operate, it's no youtube for instance. On the other hand, how's is this supposed to even theoretically make money? There's no ads of any kind on the site, no user fees, and if some browser plugin type setup is used, there'd be no way to even add something like that after the fact. Money isn't anything of course, but it seems to me there's no way to possibly even pay operating costs.

TomTom sorry for giving customer driving data to cops

Motorist's worst enemy

"On the other hand, on the way home a spokesman for motorists stated that TomtTom had sold this information to the number one enemy of motorists. I find that also a little suspect. Whilst part of the police's job is simply collecting the 'speed tax' they do also serve a useful role in reducing road deaths which makes them far from the motorists worst enemy."

Not here they don't. They set up speed traps here at the bottom of hills if possible, and in areas with artificially low speed limits (we have 25MPH roads that would be 45MPH in any other town -- no driveways, no intersecting streets, no pedestrians trying to cross the road.) Not areas where speeding actually is dangerous (areas with lots of driveways, intersections, pedestrian traffic, school zones, etc.). They do nothing about people who drive excessively slow, obstructing traffic. They do nothing about people who "left lane pace" (sit in the left lane and pace whoever is in the right lane, no matter how slow, eliminating use of the left lane as a passing lane). They do nothing about people who drift in and out of their lane (even when there are cars next to them), being a danger to everyone else on the road. They do nothing about people who don't pay attention and cut people off (both by improper lane changes, and by doing a right turn on red in front moving traffic, then not bothering to accelerate to match it's speed.) And for that matter they don't do anything about red light runners (not the ones that go through on a "stale yellow", I don't care about that, but the ones that keep going AFTER the light is red). In other words, they do not do anything to improve traffic safety, and truly are the motorist's worst enemy.

Apple breaks location-storing silence

Weirdo

@Magnus_Pym, and that's fine, if people want to broadcast their location to all and sundry that is their right. But it is everyone else's right to NOT do this.

Surprise surprise, Apple is lying. Look what StelMG says, he extracted the DB, and plotted the data -- result? Accurate location by date and time (with a few outliers.) At the very least, Apple is obfuscating the issue by saying "Oh, it's not YOUR location, it's CELL SITE location (even though they are almost one and the same for the typical urban user)."

I wonder what people would think if they saw my supposed location based on cell site location? The three sites i usually camp on (several miles apart, we don't have microcells on every street corner around here) are (according to OpensignalMaps) based in a park, a second park, or a third park, so I guess I'd appear to be some kind of weirdo that hangs out in parks all day and night 8-).

Cops raid man whose Wi-Fi was used to download child porn

WEP and unencrypted networks

First off, I wonder how many of those 32% who admitted to trying to access networks that didn't belong to them were just using open access points? To me, if someone doesn't even bother to put WEP on, this suggests they are permitting people to use their network. Also, my Ubuntu system doesn't, but many machines seem to *automatically* connect to open wireless access points, so I bet far more than 32% have accessed "networks that didn't belong to them" without even realizing it.

Secondly, so, yes WEP is weak. But, it does indicate that you don't want just anyone to use your network, and I think many people will respect that, especially given the preponderance of networks that are explicitly left open (no encryption whatsoever).

That said, I've actually been surprised here in Iowa City, I keep hearing about all these open access points still all over the place, but around here it is probably only about 1 out of 20. For instance where I am now, I see 16 networks, 1 is open (and it's "fake open", even though it has "Guest" in the name if one connects to it pulls up a web page asking for a password!)

Windows phones send user location to Microsoft

At least it's in TOS

No Microsoft fan, but at least they apparently put this relatively clearly into their TOS. I'd really like to know how this is used though.

Locating wireless access points? Frankly, I don't give a toss. This is a useful functionality, so if you are using location based services, your phone can locate itself without GPS being on, saving you battery power.

But, if location + unique ID are sent, how long are they stored? The unique ID *could* be stripped immediately. They could keep a few data points as a "sanity check", to make sure the phone is not faulty and claiming it's jumping all over the planet. On the other end of the spectrum, they could be keeping every data point forever.

Five amazing computers for under £100

NAS and Ubuntu on older kit

@Jim 59, re slow NASes. It's even worse than that, the CPU is actually plenty powerful to get 'er done. But, these NASes crucially do not include ethernet and hard disk controllers that allow for zero-copy. With zero-copy, samba, nfs, etc. use a sendfile() command, which can read a file directly off the hard disk into ethernet card buffers, ready to send, with the only CPU overhead being the small amount to tell where the data should go. Without zero-copy, the CPU is stuck laboriously copying blocks of data around. This can also be sped up with a DMA engine, which these also don't have. All I can say, on an old 486-66 back in the day, without sendfile() the CPU was at ~90% to throw a file onto the 10mbit ethernet. With it working, about 5%.

As for the X40, you CAN have fancy window effects. Just ditch Windows (BTW, one problem with putting 2GB in the X40, the spec sheets I saw said 1.5GB is the max on them, 512MB onboard and 1GB in a DIMM slot). This thing has an Intel (non-)Exterme Graphics 2 in it, fire up Ubuntu and you have all the desktop effects you want. I've run it on a 1.5ghz Pentium M, and now on a 1.3 Atom (with extra support for the weird Poulsbo video added on). Believe it or not it actually makes the Atom run acceptably.

If you want, the same thing will work on the Pismo (although perhaps not with desktop effects) -- when I was working at a University surplus selling some used Macs, they were almost all older ones that would not run current OSX. Some people wanted the whole OSX experience, or had older software they wanted to run anyway. Fair enough. Others liked the Mac HARDWARE but wanted up-to-date software on it. It's well hidden on their site but there IS an Ubuntu for PowerPC, and although officially unsupported it runs GREAT on a PowerPC.

Lasers set to replace spark plugs in car engines

US diesel vehicles

First, for whatever reason, diesel here costs more than gasoline for some reason. People are dumb, and don't realize a diesel will get so much higher MPG as to dwarf the small price difference.

Second, gasoline here is relatively cheap (it's approaching $4 a gallon), and traditionally people here have not given a toss as much about MPG. It's fun now to poke fun at people that bought some horribly inefficient SUV or something a year or two ago, WHILE everyone was telling them gas prices would spike, and now they are bitching about gas prices being so high*.

Third, the big push for diesels here was in the late 70s. Everything then ran horribly. But, we ended up with stuff like VW Diesel Rabbits, and GM made a few horrible diesels where they just took a gas V8 or V6 and upped the compression. They all barely could move, and smoked like crazy. People here think of this and of busses and semis (the local busses were VERY smokey until just a year or two ago, I think the city and University may have gotten new diesel mechanics.)

Fourth factor now, EMISSIONS. VW has sold TDIs here for years, which are fabulous, but even had to pull those off the market for a few years because they couldn't meet emissions. We don't have quite the same standards for gas and diesel engines but diesel emissions aren't so lax as in other countrys.

*On a side tangent -- we can finally get decent-MPG cars here within the last year or so, with more coming out as 2012 models. US'ians don't all want gas guzzlers, there was almost no choice in the matter. From the early 1990s to like 2011, if I had wanted a good-MPG vehicle, there was basically Geo Metro (before it went off the market in the mid-90s), Prius, a few years of the Honda Insight (before it also ballooned into the non-efficient vehicle they sell now), and various VW TDI models. THAT'S IT. Before the last year or so, there was this absurd feedback loop running for years. It went like this: Car companies looked at sales figures, they saw people with the cash buying larger cars, and cars with more power. Conclusion? For years, the larger vehicles and V6s have been tuned for mileage (tall cruising gears and whatever MPG-improving tricks they can put on), they'll get like 28-30MPG highway, and the few V8s will do at least 25MPG. Smaller vehicles? They'll take a model that gets good MPG everywhere else, decide it needs more power to have a chance to sell -- result, they lower the gearing, they soup up the engine at expense of MPG or entirely replace the engine with a US-specific one. They are sold at a low price so fuel-saving technologies may not be fitted to them. So you end up with a subcompact car that gets 30-32MPG highway. Which would you buy, a subcompact that gets 30MPG, or a larger, more powerful vehicle that ALSO gets 30MPG? They then looked at sales figures, rinse and repeat. FINALLY within the last year or so there's more 35-40+MPG models coming out, and not surprisingly they are selling great.

Animal lovers stamp on goldfish racing

PETA is ridiculous

"Current research has the jury out on wether fish feel pain or not in the way we think of it. However its reasonable to assume they could feel at least some sort of stress from outside stimilus because tit tends to be linked with survval reflexes."

Sure they do, if you've seen videos of either fishing, or bears catching fish, you should see how they flop around.

As for the race itself -- sorry, these are not firehoses or something (not a *high pressure water jet* as one person said), I think drunken peoples giving fish little squirts with water pistols is probably less stressful than a jockey kicking the horse to keep them going. PETA are ridiculous.

WTF is... 4K x 2K?

IBM T221

Then of course there is the IBM T220 and IBM T221 monitors. Which, unfortunately, are long off the market, and I've been unable to find even a used example for sale. This bit of madness was a 22.2" LCD that ran at 3840x2400! Yep, you could get (almost) this full 4Kx2K resolution, with some room underneath for some menu controls or something. This comes out to 206 dots per inch, these apparently looked ASTOUNDING.

The T220 came with a Matrox G200 MMS card, since it required *4* DVI links to run at full resolution. The T221 had several variants, with various solutions allowing fewer DVI links to be hooked up to drive it.

Behind Apple's record sales are signs of desperation

Apple's always been big on lawsuits

""Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple's innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple's valuable intellectual property rights," the complaint reads."

A lawsuit over look and feel huh? Surprise surprise, from Apple. Anyway, Apple has ALWAYS been heavy on the lawsuits, cease and desist orders, and so on. They just have an excellent PR firm that seems to successfully keep this out of the mainstream media (and low-key in the IT media, so it's easy to forget how often Apple hassling someone comes up.)

Google to sell subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks?

My software is already sandboxed

"But frankly this would suit my parents to a tee. And reduce the phone calls to me drastically!"

If you just jettison Windows off their EXISTING machine (put Ubuntu on) that'll already happen.

Anyway, I for one don't want to pay a rental fee for my computer. I also don't want a computer that is ONLY a web browser (I must admit, I use my Mini A LOT for browsing, but being able to play videos off my local disk, to print, to do some local word processing, I want to do this. Oh, I also have run packet sniffers and junk now and again to diagnose network problems, but must admit that is not a usual use.) And, if it is just running a browser, what is the point of having a hardware refresh?

As for "sandboxes", umm, every time browser-based computing is bandied about, or java, or even .NET (even though it turned out not to be true for it), they always mention "sandboxes". Well, running applications DIRECTLY on my system, the apps are run as a user, so with most of the disk being owned by root they cannot write to most directories. They cannot read files or directories owned by other users unless they are specifically set world-readable, or group readable and the user is a member of that group. Memory protection means the app will segfault if it tries to read or write memory outside it's address space. Since I'm running Ubuntu 10.10, Apparmor uses access control lists to enforce further restrictions on what can and cannot be done by various software. This appears to be pretty well sandboxed to me!

How to build a national cellular wireless network for £50m

Bad idea

At least in the US, this is a terrible idea, some cities have quite crowded TV bands. Other areas? Well, I live in a city, but there's only 2 local channels. The rest are 60+ miles away, some are considered to be in a different market and so would be considered "fair game" to broadcast right over as far as this junk is concerned. I'm DEEPLY concerned about this type of equipment being too lax in what it considers "white space", and being sloppy in keeping it's transmissions within it's channel.

One reason a database is being required? The companies LIED. Microsoft and Google (what odd bedfellows) were two proponents of this, initially assuring the FCC that of course they can detect TV signals and avoid broadcasting over them. MS submitted hardware, which flat-out FAILED to detect existing TV and broadcast right over it. They said the hardware was faulty (my response -- so what? If your hardware is going to fail "interfere with TV" instead of failing "don't transmit at all", it should not be certified.) They were allowed to submit again, it failed a SECOND time.

Secondly, using this for some M2M thing that may transmit kilobytes a second? What a waste, a grand total of 1mhz would be ample for the type of use they are envisioning, I'm sure they can just license it from Ofcom (since a slice that small can't be used for a cell phone network, TV, or broadband data, there's loads of little slices like that available here in the States, I can't imagine UK would be different.)

Finally, these same economies of scale that apply to this whitespace system they propose are beginning to kick in for conventional cellular equipment too, the devices AT&T and Verizon are selling for use in a house are under $100 subsidized, so a real price of under $500 (they've been calling them microcells, but I think they are actually a femtocell in the grand scheme of things since they usually only cover one flat), but microcells are dropping fast in price too. The thing is, I don't think physical equipment is even the big cost of building a network these days -- it's the labor to install it, the payments to obtain space on "towers", on top of buildings, etc., to locate the equipment and antennas, and so on.

Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict

Re: Boycott east Texas

@frank ly, what you don't understand is that patent trolls ALL file in east Texas, they COULD file somewhere else but then there would be a fair trial, which would usually have the numerous cases of prior art come up and invalidate their patents. The argument for bringing these cases into east Texas, instead of somewhere with fair judges, is that these companies do business in east Texas. If I started a business, I DEFINITELY would exclude this area from my business, forcing any patent trolls to do battle in a fair location.

No, iPhone location tracking isn't harmless and here's why

Is it Area 51?

This area in Nevada? Is it Area 51 by any chance?

Regarding cell site location -- carriers may keep this data private, but 1) The location of *some* sites is public. In the US, the FCC, along with filings of "towers" that are tall enough (so airplanes and stuff don't hit them.) In addition, Google, cellumap, Roots, and i'm sure others, have used phones with GPS *on* (along with signal strength and cell site ID, which both GSM and CDMA sites use) to triangulate cell site locations for those that are not public. For IPhone spying on you, probably it has more exact locations if GPS is on. And if it's off, it probably uses the estimate based on cell site location.

'Real' JavaScript benchmark topped by...Microsoft

Failure to understand

Re: "why is everyone so obsessed with Javascript performance? When do you ever sit there in front of your browser thinking "hmmm, this script is really taking a long time to add a table row and apply a CSS style" ?"

I have had significant speedups on my 1.3ghz Atom, going from Firefox 3.0 to 3.6, due to 3.0 slowing to a dead crawl on some of the bloated Javascript some pages had. It significantly improved my battery life too.

"You don't. No one does. Chasing JS performance is a waste of time, for the vast majority of users it is completely irrelevant."

This is the kind of attitude that ends up with the bloatware that plagues the lives of Windows users (both the Microsoft-included ones, and the horribly written apps that can be added later.) Some have the attitude that, if their application runs adequately as the only thing running on a single-user system, they are done. Traditional UNIX tihnking has ALWAYS accomodated a large range of system speeds, and accomodated the idea that there may well be multiple users on the system. Your app runs well enough on a XYZmhz system? Good, but see if you can make it faster, then the system can accomodate more simultaneous users. In addition, on a battery-powered device, improvements in performance SAVE BATTERY POWER.