Posts by John 48

Lemmings

aha, the reason no one will play a two player game with me even to this day!

Yes many fond memories... level 28 of Mayhem still haunts me to this day. I took weeks of trying to complete that. One lemming to save, and about 9 minutes to do it in.

Two player lemmings is where I earned my reputation as an "utter utter bastard!", to the point that SWMBO (who was my beloved GF at the time of lemmings release) is highly wary of playing any two player (computer!) game with me these days. There they would all be, happily walking safely to the exit, green clad lemmings in one direction, blue the other. Could I resist the temptation to upset the happy balance? It seems not. Quick turn one around with a quick attempt to build by some obstacle, or area of confined headroom, and then "oops", there appears to be a blocker right in the middle of someone's carefully constructed bridge! Or, for devastating effect, (my speciality), dig the ground away from under the opposing exit and watch them frantically try to get a builder to repair the damage. Oh how easy it was to ruin it all with a basher when they finally managed.

I can still hear the exasperated screams of "oh, I am not playing with you any more!" ;-)))

Errata : SWMBO was just read this over my shoulder, and proclaimed "its not just me", "its the reason that nobody will play two player lemmings with you! In fact they are now wary of pretty much any multi-player game, right from Scrabble to Monopoly!"

Intel mad for power, but stacked-up dies keep MELTING!

Who is Eric Moore when he is at home?

... or is this a new Moore's law we have not heard about?

The IBM PC: On 12 August 1981, the world changed

February 1984's IBM PC Portable and the August-announced PC AT

The PC-AT did not just have a faster 6MHz processor. It had a faster 6MHz 80286 in place of the 8088/6 of the earlier machines, and also a 16 bit wide version of the expansion bus (or ISA bus as we know it today). It also brought us what we would now recognise as the standard keyboard layout.

LulzSec hacker Sabu: Murdoch emails 'sometime soon'

Even if it does throw question over the voracity of their email database...

It would be interesting to see if they (NI) can produce the actual backups of the email database to refute (or more likely confirm) the claimed content.

The thing about email is that at least one copy of every email sent or received probably also exists on someone else's computer over which you don't have any control.

So for an investigator with a copy of the hacked emails, it would not be too difficult to take a random sample, contact the other parties to said emails, and verify if they do indeed match. Once you have a good correlation it becomes a whole lot harder for NI to refute and claim they have been altered by the hackers.

Mac trojan evades Apple's brand new security fix

Apple must be rubbing their hands with glee...

I am sure Apple must be viewing this as a glittering marketing opportunity. First you need a bogey man to get people scared and make the draconian medication seem more palatable ("war on terror"?). Then you "offer" to limit software installations to those sourced through the approved app store.

Shrinkwrap vendors will be encouraged of course to contribute their big high ticket apps to the store as well - to create a better "user experience" with streamlined purchase, install and updates just a click (and credit card number) away.

How long do they wait until this starts to become the *only* way to get software on the machine?

Even armed with the DVD bought from the retail dealer, you still need a permission token from the app store. Its just for your added protection you understand.

Then the software vendors find that every route to market needs participation from the app store. Oddly they have started to charge for this. Only an admin charge to "cover costs" though. Oh, and that charge applies to updates as well. Users this is in your "best interests" so its better you just accept it. After all you would not want to have to jailbreak you Mac now would you?

Software vendors, you obviously would not want to write anything that conflicts with Apple's world view now would you - just in case there is a vetting procedure for software to get permission to be sold to the Mac user base. Remember just because they paid for the thing, its not their computer. Oh, and we have "simplified" the app store for vendors now - there is no longer a charge for adding your product to the store. Instead we will simply charge small fee based on 30% of the sale price.

Any of this sound familiar?

In true Apple tradition, its ok to punish your loyal customers, but its better to get them to pay to be punished. They will like you more that way.

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

Tanks still have a place

If you read any of the crop of recent front line accounts from Iraq* and Afghanistan, it seem fairly clear that there is still a significant use for armoured brigades to support troops on the ground in counter insurgency roles. Columns of Warrior APCs supported by Challenger II main battle tanks often proved to be the only way of safely delivering vital resupply and troop relief in urban siege situations like that of Cimic house in Iraq.

* Read Dan Mills "Sniper One" for a breathtaking account of British forces in the thick of an all out conflict not seen since WWII

Anti-piracy lawyers' email database leaked after hack

How is it?

Everyone seems obsessed with whether this counts as a hack or just a more general brain fart on behalf of the web site admins, and yet they are not asking the more obvious question; i.e. WTF is any of this information doing on a public web server in the first place?

Garage card scammer jailed

RE: Impossible

"Unless someone steals your finger", I suspect that for a good number of potential scammers this would make the whole exercise much simpler than using high tech hacked PIN terminals or beating a pin out of a victim!

Balinese lad seduced by bovine temptress

Its an odd way

to steak one's reputation!

Stick a fork in floppies - they're done

What do you mean 1.44MB?

Amazed that no pedant (until now that is) has pointed out that there never was a 1.44MB floppy standard. There was a 1440K standard, but that works out at about 1.41MB!

Car thieves making clean getaway with GPS jammers

Re: Err...Everyone is missing one MAJOR point

And what do you suppose is being reported over that VHF connection?

Things like the position of the vehicle obtained from the GPS unit perhaps....

E-book readers attract unwanted VAT

Another can of worms ripe for opening

Who else can see the wrinkle? Buy this nice shiny e-book - its VAT free!

(oh, and by the way, it comes on a reusable 32GB SD card or whatever other storage device would benefit from being punted VAT free).

I was about to say, cue future budget and watch Gordo back pedal with cries of "Oh you naughty people, I never intended you to take advantage of my legislation like that!", but with a bit of luck Gordo and mates will be history by then.

Gov confirms plans for Sky box in charge of your house

They have load management already!

Its seems rather odd that "load management" is a selling point of these devices. Reasonably sophisticated load shedding capabilities are already built into the distribution network.

At times when demand exceeds supply capability, parts of the 11kv network are equipped with smart transformers that can be remotely instructed to reduce the voltage of the network supplying an area in steps of 200V or so. This manifests as a small voltage drop on the low voltage part of the network feeding end users, and hence a corresponding reduction in load (most domestic load being resistive in nature, ohms law applies!). Unlike remotely switching things off, a slight overall voltage reduction generally goes unnoticed.

Anti-filesharing laws revive crypto fears for spooks

Since we know that the encyption is rarely the weak part of the chain

A more general move to encrypted comms will prevent large scale eavesdropping. That seems like no bad thing. For all the bluster about it preventing the security services doing their jobs regarding the usual suspects, the result is, that it will make little difference.

After all, they can still get a court order and go and demand the intermediate host (facebook or whoever) hand over logs for a given user, or they can lean on the various other weak points in the system where the information is in plain text (bugging your PC if they need to). What they won't however be able to do is a general fishing expedition with bulk data mining to try and fit "crimes" to recognisable patterns of behaviour (bad for the 1% of cases where they have spotted a real crime, but good for the 99%+ false positives). They will need to focus their investigations on cases where there is a genuine interest / intelligence, or an established investigation. This is how things were before they got sold on the technocrats wet dream of being able to see everything, any-time, anywhere, without needing to put any effort into it.

As for the "If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide" brigade, lets put this one to bed once and for all. What you say is right, *if* you can fully accept the two fundamental principles that the logic is founded on:

1) That the people you are entrusting to look at your data can be relied upon 100% of the time to keep it secure and private, and;

2) that they will only every have benign intent (and that includes anyone or group that may be able to influence, infiltrate, or hack said organisation).

Hopefully our current government and civil service have ably demonstrated that 1 can't be relied upon (copy of a HMRC CD anyone?), and anyone who has ever heard of a minion being bribed / blackmailed / tricked into disclosing personal information should realise 2 is impossible to guarantee. (and that was before unsecured and unofficial wireless LANs were making a broad range of "secret" civil service IT systems visible to the man in the street (literally!))

Bloke uses nail clippers to go roundhead

You could charge money for a service like that

Say £50 a time - plus tips.