* Posts by Paul Shirley

2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

Sophos downplays Android malware threat

Paul Shirley

its basic Linux security

'su' is how you run commands with root permissions, without it a rooted phone behaves identically to an unrooted one. Since su pops up a full screen requester every time its used it's hard to sneak su use in without the user noticing. Hard to install a rootkit without su...

When someone works out how to bypass that requester then we'll be in trouble.

Paul Shirley
Linux

no remote install -> no threat

If my G1 pops up a random su requester you can guarantee I'll get suspicious real fast. Until someone finds a *silent* privilege escalation being jailbroken is no less secure than not, on Android at least.

This rootkit claim appears to require physical possession of the phone, at which point its rooted state hardly matters, just saving them rooting it themselves!

Poisoned Angelina flick hits torrents

Paul Shirley
Grenade

codec packs

This is why using the more trustworthy codec packs (K-Lite for instance) is a good idea, nothing should need to download a codec and any its pretty obvious there's a scam if it does happen.

It's a pity so many self appointed 'experts' like to tell everyone that all codec packs are evil.

Lite-on iHBS112 internal Blu-ray writer

Paul Shirley

test it on 3rd party software

Whilst we need to know how broken the crapware shipped with the drive it, I'm a lot more interested in how well it works with the 3rd party software I actually use. A few tests with the 'usual suspects' - Nero, IMGBurn, K3b etc. - would be more useful to the average reg reader and their OEM version of the drive.

IPVision FetchTV SmartBox 8000 DVR

Paul Shirley

yes, its Netgem(ish)

Most of the management are ex Netgem UK.

Which means you should be very wary, Netgem had an appalling attitude to fixing bugs and bugger all success at actually doing it. Every 6 months a new pile of bugs masquerading as fixes for the last pile of bugs, for 3 solid years on my iPlayer. I'd wait a few months to see what users say before buying.

Verizon slashes Microsoft Kin phone prices

Paul Shirley
FAIL

$0.01 at Amazon

Old news, been 1cent at Amazon for a while now.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-KIN-ONE-Windows-Wireless/dp/B003H4R6SA

'Industry giant' fragged UK games developer tax break

Paul Shirley
Unhappy

its economic warfare and you just surrendered

>If UK games companies aren't able to stand on their own, why should the rest of us subsidise them?

Simple choice: do you want the youngsters that staff this industry pissing away their wages in Britain or somewhere else prepared to tempt them with tax breaks. Once those youngsters leave the UK they don't come back, don't send money back and my gaming £ ends up in the foreign pockets they work for.

If you want to fix this bit of economic warfare without offering tax breaks, good luck trying to close down the subsidies we're fighting against. But you don't really care do you?

Virgin Media in talks with power firms to expand network

Paul Shirley

1 day,2? maybe 3 for the BT reply

...and the countdown to BT suddenly discovering it can afford to deploy to those homes has begun...

Facebook's critics 'unrealistic', says US privacy law expert

Paul Shirley

do privacy right or stop trying to make a buck from it

If rigorous privacy control is 'uncommercial' then commercial entities should get the hell out of the business. Their right to make a buck comes a poor second to my human rights and outside the idiotically corporate US it usually does.

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

Paul Shirley

only storing packets worth mining

Of course they didn't store encrypted packets, the fscking car didn't hang around long enough to sniff enough data to decrypt it. These packets were useless for data mining, not storing them is an admission of intent, not an excuse for a mistake.

They need to stop digging and start properly apologising.

First WiMAX handset not Sprinting from stores

Paul Shirley
Coat

no coverage

With 4G only available in 27 locations its a miracle they sold more than 27 handsets!

Mobiles back in the frame as bee killers

Paul Shirley
Flame

recognising fraudulent research

Also worth reading http://www.newscientist.com/special/living-in-denial to get a feel for how to recognise bad or deliberately deceptive 'research'. In this case it sure looks like there are ties to the wider world of alarmist denialism.

I'd really appreciate it if TheReg added a MASSIVE link to that page on every Orlowski post, the man that demonstrated the link between SCO's fraudulent Linux lawsuit and Global Warming ;)

Woman sues Google after highway knockdown

Paul Shirley
Grenade

bet she ran the car down ;)

In my part of the world when a suicidal or plain stupid pedestrian stumbles into the path of a car we don't automatically blame the car driver. We already know this woman is stupid, I want to hear more than her word before deciding who's at fault here.

Brit honeybees crawl through rotten winter

Paul Shirley
Flame

honey bees not needed

Honey bees - aggressive freeloading buzzing bastards and not native to the UK. My garden seems to do perfectly well with our army of assorted bumble bees and other pollinating insects. Rather less food crops need insect pollination than the beekeepers would like you to believe anyway - grains are wind pollinated for example.

But what would summer be without the honey lobby whining ;)

Google blames developers for lousy Android battery life

Paul Shirley
Linux

3G - not just a battery drain, its completely bloody useless

Saw a 50% life increase after switching down to 2G+WiFi on my G1. Even more impressive when you consider how broken WiFi is on Android, not using the real power saving sleep modes. Given the piss poor quality of 3G in most of the UK its no loss.

Pretty easy to spot the power sucking apps as well and tame them. Netcounter in accurate mode is one of the worst. Right now I'd be getting 2-3 days between charges if I didn't browse the morning away in bed ;)

Google backs open codec against patent trolls

Paul Shirley

its about excluding competitors

As part of the patent pool they're protected from patent attacks. Unlike everyone outside that pool... even ignoring any patent fees they're collecting this disadvantages potential competitors.

Of course they like it, no proven monopoly abuser (Microsoft) or control freak (Apple) could miss this opportunity!

Orange offers 'pay per meg' iPad 3G data plan

Paul Shirley

too stupid to use a meat cleaver

For some people using a meat cleaver to cut down a normal SIM is just too hard... even with a pictorial guide to use. The rest of us just pay less ;)

Ocarina compresses Flash and MPEG2s

Paul Shirley

new mpeg2 encoders

Hope they tested against todays encoders, which already achieved that 40% improvement over the last 5 years or so. They've nearly hit that level of improvement on Freeview over the last 2 years.

Surely they wouldn't rig the samples with old, badly compressed mpeg2 to make their transcoder/recoder look good... would they?

Ten Essential Android Apps

Paul Shirley

Navigation

Navigation is in the latest maps update, it even manages to start before telling me my location is not yet supported, its coming. The impatient can look for the hacked maps app and use it now.

Titanium Backup is the essential app backup tool for rooted phones.

Cant believe no SMS replacements were listed, Handcents this weeks favourite, since ChompSMS went too far with the adverts.

Screeble: orientation and motion controlled override for sleep, seriously extends battery life by allowing much more aggressive sleep timeouts. I like my G1 running for more than a day.

I'd love to suggest an alternative to Fring, with its atrocious UI but its the only app where SIP 'just works'.

Of course the ultimate 'app' is a new rooted firmware, more speed, more apps, more choice.

Paul Shirley
Unhappy

2.1 too bloated for older hardware

They're hamstrung by not having the app2sd option hacked ROMs use. 2.1 got so bloated getting it to fit into flash on older hardware is a problem and dumping apps onto SD to make space causes problems normal users won't be happy with.

Google slots nested labels, sneak peek experiments into Gmail

Paul Shirley
Flame

so focussed on search the solution is always 'search'

WTF would anyone need email showing in multiple folders for? Its about as stupid as wanting a different copy in search results for each tag.

Folders are for grouping, tags are for searching, one is not a substitute for the other. Unless you're Google and the answer to every problem is 'search'. Idiots.

Lower termination rates will bring pricey data

Paul Shirley

charge more

They already do! With PAYG rates @20p/min a 4.3p termination charge already has no connection to the call rate, odds are absolutely nothing will change for mobile 2 mobile calls by 2015. Contract rates are already theoretically below the termination charge if you look hard enough (and spend enough monthly).

The only foreseeable improvement will be call rates on VOIP lines. Currently I pay 8.9p/min to call a mobile (in fact I don't, its cheaper to call with my mobile!), its extremely likely all of the termination charge reduction will be passed on and that's likely to displace mobile originated calls.

iPad security broken in less than 24 hours

Paul Shirley
Flame

rushed into production

Let's face it, the iPad is Apple panicking. Android tablets started popping up and Apple suddenly upsizes the iPhone... without waiting to remove all the phone specific stuff. Cue apps trying to get GPS fixes and other stupidity.

Seems most normal punters are just smart enough to wait for Apple to finish the job, or more likely can't understand why a bigger but less functional iPhone is better than the one already in their pocket. Truly just a geek toy right now.

MS sees Windows 7 leap, but XP workhorse refuses to die

Paul Shirley
Thumb Down

doesn't stay fast though

Go back in 3 months and see if its still running fast. Every standalone version of Windows I know accumulates cruft at a spectacular rate and slows down. The folk re-installing Windows every few months to maintain speed aren't completely delusional.

Novell (not SCO) owns UNIX, says jury

Paul Shirley
Grenade

7 years but finally the lawyers are in the firing line

What you forget is SCO's lawyers jumped on board as partners in the scam right at the start. Despite attempts to disentangle themselves when the sheer extent of SCO lies became undeniable they've been well and truly screwed for it.

Last guesstimate I saw was around $30mil in the red on the case around a year ago, they were paid upfront and spent it all long ago, meanwhile they're on the hook all the way to appeal. The pain is just starting for Bois,Shiller & Flexner, IBM show no sign of voluntarily ending their case - which is now IBM's counterclaims against SCO and not much else - a couple more years expense. IBM will be going for costs and only the lawyers will be around to pay, given their sharp practice throughout they're likely to get hammered badly.

It's been a good day but the best is still to come, when the legal support services that allowed this travesty to last so long finally see retribution. We'll be safe from this sort of extortion scam only when the lawyers see its not safe to get this involved.

Microsoft flaunts cross-platform gaming goodies

Paul Shirley
WTF?

not impressed

20 years ago porting Amstrad CPC Z80 source to CBM C64 6502 I was hitting that 90% shared source in the majority of source files. Only the poor conditional assembly support in the tools stopped me actually using the same files.

Frankly, if you can't hit that ratio your doing something very wrong, especially in a higher level language. Just a little planning and the right architecture.

Nothing to see here.

Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700

Paul Shirley

Bluetooth

Out of the box Bluetooth support in Android is minimal, just the stack and headset support,so far all Android phones have shipped bare. Quickly fixed by a trip to the app market but its a puzzle why no one preinstalls any of the apps.

Banking industry worker faces cosh over anonymous rant

Paul Shirley

cackhanded effort

Call me simple minded but claiming this attack is so easy a 1st year student could do it tells me Chip&Pin is easy to break. The idiot couldn't even astroturf right, deserves sacking for undermining his employers denials, even if he wasn't caught publicly.

MPs bash broadband tax

Paul Shirley
Flame

I already subsidised Internet access

Down the years I've pumped £1000's (literally) into Internet access, as a perpetual early adopter I've already subsidized broadband at levels the 50p tax will never reach here in the city. £90+/month right at the start of dial-up ;(

If rural areas want it they need to do the same, pay the premium needed to bootstrap supply themselves. And give up on this fixation on fibre, if they can afford to run a mobile they can afford to run mobile broadband. The towers will deploy a hell of a lot faster than BT will act.

Researcher spies new Adobe code execution bug

Paul Shirley
Flame

Firefox exploits can be contained

Firefox does have exploits but it can be sandboxed and because its not deeply hooked into the OS there's little chance of getting round the sandbox. My copy only has access to a few folders, cannot install software or run external programs with enough file and|or system privileges to even work let alone do damage.

Remember: IE is evil because it deliberately pushes its bugs into the OS with high privileges, not because its buggy.

Surprise Adobe update grapples with critical flaws

Paul Shirley

just dump Reader

Best security fix for Reader? Uninstall and replace with ANY other pdf reader... as a bonus you'll stop needing to task kill the zombie process their POS leaves running after you quit.

BBC clambers onto iPhone bandwagon

Paul Shirley

where's the content?

Since the entire BBC site now appears to just be a search engine for iPlayer I'm not sure why they're bothering - there's bugger all content left to present! Every damn search for information seems to just link to a iPlayer episode list, with fsck all information about anything.

Microsoft made a phone, and I hate it already

Paul Shirley

The problem is that I don't want a mobile phone

No, the problem is most people that 'just want a phone' aren't going to spend £300+, however pretty it is. Especially not when a £4.99 candy bar does the job well enough.

Android first to host Adobe's AIR for smartphones

Paul Shirley
FAIL

why wont flash just die

Already watching iPlayer on my Android phone, so that's the only (half) desirable Flash App redundant. No reason to infest it with an OS crashing lump of fail after all ;)

Bishop Hill: Gonzo science and the Hockey Stick

Paul Shirley

puppets

Heaven knows what will happen if the skeptics finally accept all that air pollution we spent a century getting rid of was heavily suppressing warming...

Still, the real wonder of climate skeptics is how easily a small group of energy company provocateurs can make them dance. Going to be hilarious when the companies are finally ready with their climate change 'solutions', after 20 years delaying the competition they'll finally come clean and disown the skeptics. The meltdowns among the puppets will be spectacular to watch ;)

Drink beer not fizzy pop for pity's sake, say boffins

Paul Shirley

meanwhile in Belgium

Reminds me of the Belgian 'Metro' front page story about a school outlawing soft drink vending machines and supply table beer instead - because a 2-3% beer was considered much healthier than sugary fizz!

Never did find out if it was just a wind up, we were hitting the 10% stuff too hard that week to keep track ;)

Mozilla overlooked malware-laced Firefox add-ons

Paul Shirley
Flame

Windows Administrator account

...they use it because Windows is damn near unusable from a user account.

If Mozilla want to get serious about security they can quite easily make Mozilla downgrade its permissions as it starts, before plugins get a chance to do anything. Right now I have to do that externally with the DropMyRights app.

The wailing when clueless users discover they can't access most of the filesystem, run installers or fire up external apps with any hope of success is a powerful disincentive to enforcing that. If its optional the clueless will opt out - how else can you explain use of Internet Exploit engine?

Facebook re-write takes PHP to an enterprise past

Paul Shirley

@C++ Can't do...

When people say this they mostly mean 'it doesn't do that out of the box'. There are very few things C++ cannot do, with enough effort. Reflection is the main one because the information simply isn't there in the binary to allow it but if you need reflection in a production app you got the design wrong!

There are things its harder to do (the 1st time) in C++ but hard != impossible. Good C++ programmers also know that other languages can get the coding done faster and very occasionally produce better run times. Something the script kiddies seem to struggle to understand...

Paul Shirley
WTF?

C++ is traditionally associated with...

Really? I associate it with the exciting world of game programming, where any CV not starting with 3+ years of C++ flies straight from envelope to bin.

Or it would do if the bloody education system actually taught the language instead of whichever scripted/late bound/JIT based monstrosity happens to be in fashion that year. So we end up accepting self taught C++ hackers with pitiful skill in the language because even that's better than experts in those other languages.

Virgin hails 'free' landline-to-mobe calls

Paul Shirley

Virgin telephony: overpriced beyond belief

Virgin's landline tariffs are actually higher than using my mobile for ANY charged calls. Just the connection charge is more than 90% of my mobile calls cost and their landline to mobile costs are astronomical.

Offering free calls to the only person I know on Virgin Mobile, for the 10 hours or so I'll be sober at weekends is too little, too late. And she'll be switching to GiffGaff when the Virgin credit runs out anyway!

Odd's are they'll forget to actually tell any customers about this change and we'll all carry on avoiding land->mobile calls. Its the Virgin way.

Sky 3D soccer fails to score

Paul Shirley

rugby

Going to be good for rugby matches, the set pieces are almost designed for 3D closeups. Think I'll skip the 6 Nations 3D showing and put the £12.50 ticket price towards beer in my local though ;)

Airport scanners go live today, kids included

Paul Shirley
WTF?

hiding from lawsuits

"putting the security officer viewing the images out of sight of passengers"

...so they cant be identified should anyone feel like suing... regulations to cover their arses passed off as benefiting us. This government just don't know how to stop lying.

British poshos outdrink chavs

Paul Shirley
FAIL

diagnosis bias

Am I alone in wondering how much of that rise in deaths is simply changes in diagnosis and the increase imaginary? There seems to be nothing some teetotal shit of a doctor can't somehow link to alcohol whenever invited to comment and a campaign to push the lie is well underway.

I'm also finding the endless attempts to report on increasing alcohol related crime comically inept. Sure, my local hospital seems to have an endless line of staff willing to agree with the claim. Those problem drinkers must all be drinking at the hospital, the pubs and clubs have been empty all year!

And don't start me on 24 hour drinking and the chaos its (supposedly) caused. I'm still trying to work out why I count 2 hours LESS opening time on my circuit, or where to find a drink 24 hours a day. Pubs all asked for extended hours simply to avoid the nightmare getting extensions for special events has become, the teetotallers like to gloss over pubs not actually opening for the longer hours they're licensed for :(

Adobe sounds off on iPad's Flash slap

Paul Shirley
Grenade

its all about Android

The iPad was rushed into production because Android slates are on the way. I'm not seeing much Flash action on my Android phone giving a 'get out of Flash free' card and the freedom to drag their feet.

Either Android sprouts the Flash infection and Apple will rush out support OR this could be the first time someone who gives a shit (for all the wrong reasons) is powerful enough to dislodge this plague from the web.

So all we need to do is make sure Android never gets working Flash ;)

New inside out hover-magnet fusion reactor debuts at MIT

Paul Shirley

should have spent it on solar

I'm left wondering if throwing the money at harvesting the output of our existing, working, fusion reactor would have been more effective. If only because we'd have been actually collecting energy for the last 50 years instead of pumping it into experimental reactors.

Earthbound fusion isn't clean, isn't working and will get undercut on price by solar if they ever do make it viable. A technological dead end.

T-Mobile to revamp tariffs

Paul Shirley
Unhappy

and so it carries on

The endless game of hide&seek we have to play with the carriers never ends. The 1st carrier to abandon bundles and simply charge a fair price for what you use will make a killing. Bundles only 'work' now because the cost of falling off your bundled allowance is punitive.

Separating the pigs from the trough ain't going to be easy though ;(

Brits left cold by mobile internet

Paul Shirley

@spanners: dead right WWW!=Internet

Use an Android phone and by default it will sync your calendar,contacts and email on the internet. Want the weather widget on the home page - its dialing out. Google Maps - should be obvious though I'm sure some don't realise it. Half the market apps probably are. Browsing is often a disappointing experience anyway, however high end the phone.

Its probably a good thing most Android owners are on unlimited data contracts, with the outrageous price of data on most contracts and PAYG they would be getting nasty surprises from all that background use, without ever firing up the browser. As Spanners said: a lot of them just don't know they're using the internet.

And yes, its the price of data that's frightening everyone off. Still looking for a true PAYG data tariff that doesn't feel like they're picking my pocket. I can have far more data than my phone can consume at a really good price, presumably because they know I won't be using much of it. Or I can get ripped off on smaller chunks.

Hopefully the ongoing 'how much should we charge for data' discussion over at GiffGaff will lead somewhere closer to dump pipe pricing. Or probably not when O2 get wind of it ;(

New avast freebie security scanner aims to keel-haul MS

Paul Shirley
Flame

nice way maximise damage

Whoopee! Now when the scanner goes into a CPU sucking death spiral it can take out all the cores. At least when AVG or Comodo wipe out I can still reach the shutdown menu...

New York Times set to charge, again

Paul Shirley

they went free?

I too remember the free registration nag screen, mainly because for some reason the site could never remember I'd already registered. Pretty quickly I just stopped following links.

If they turned registration off in 2007 that should be a warning to the idiots, I didn't notice, haven't seen any of their content or ads since and likely wouldn't have checked back ever. A moment to lose eyeballs, a lifetime to get them back.

Sony Ericsson Android phone caught on camera

Paul Shirley
FAIL

stuttering

Its the garbage collector and the 'let the OS decide if you're app gets unloaded' architecture. Designed in non-deterministic behaviour which guarantees no matter how fast the CPU is it will always get stalled unpredictably. My G1 often takes 1/3 sec for garbage collection, affecting every running thread to varying degrees.

Android's core design is unsuited to real time performance. Much better at limping along on inadequate resources than running smoothly.