Posts by No 3

Huawei finally gives up on US schmoozing efforts

Re: Different in non United States Of Murica

I urge everyone to research what Huawei did to get where they are, specifically it's actions towards Nortel's technology and IP. Anybody on the 'side' of Huawei is on the side of some VERY shady stuff.

Apple pops blue bubbles of Beeper Mini's iMessage service again

I find the amount of effort put into not having a green bubble utterly hilarious

If you want rich text use another messaging service

If I were apple I'd monetize this. Offer an Android client but make people pay for it. If a blue bubble is THAT important they'll pay.

Canadian ISP Rogers falls over for hours, takes out broadband, cable, cellphones

Should mention that this exact same sort of massive outage happened just a little over a year ago, with the same provider.

Rogers is trash.

APNIC: Big Tech's use of carrier-grade NAT is holding back internet innovation

Re: That old chestnut

'Publicly addressable' doesn't infer 'publicly accessible'.

Your gateway can restrict incoming requests in the same way that you get with NAT, there is no real different there.

The big difference is not everything from your network would appear to be from one IP anymore, this has both advantages and disadvantages.

Re: That old chestnut

To this day I remember the first time someone described IPv6 to me, and my first question was: does it play with IPv4?

When the answer was no I was shocked, and immediately felt it would simply never be adopted.

I'm really sad to see that initial impression will probably pan out.

Hong Kong makes wearable trackers mandatory for new arrivals, checks in with ‘surprise calls’ too

Re: "the app will not capture directly the location, but only capture the changes in the location"

They already know you're location, since that's where you're supposed to park your ass for 14 days. I really don't see the issue here. All this thing does is tell the government if you've left the spot you're supposed to stay in.

Pretty much impossible in that part of the world for them to not have a smartphone, it's an integral part of life.

Microsoft joins Google and Mozilla in adopting DNS over HTTPS data security protocol

Re: Windows Server

Curious here: how will all of this work with captive portals?

i.e. when I connect to the 'free' wifi network on the subway, a captive portal opens which I have to click an 'I agree' button.

Facebook blames 'server config change' for 14-hour outage. Someone run that through the universal liar translator

You pay for your phone service, hence the expectation of explanation.

You pay exactly zero for FB/WhatsApp/etc, so you can expect exactly that as explanation.

If you rely on those services for real communication, well, you should reconsider your priorities.

ACLU: Here's how FBI tried to force Facebook to wiretap its chat app. Judge: Oh no you don't

For every case we here about where the government wasn't successful, there are probably 10 cases where they are.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this is old news, if the government modified their technique and succeeded in compelling FB to comply. Something we'll probably never know about.

Fake 'U's! Phishing creeps use homebrew fonts as message ciphers to evade filters

"This creates a primitive substitution cipher fooling security tools looking for certain keywords, as the software would only observe a set of random letters"

How 2010 of them. Does ANYTHING spam detecting software still work on primitive keyword lists like that?

Most systems I've seen use statistics and analytics, they look at messages hitting more the one email box and adjust accordingly. Whether the word 'payme' or 'fgswa' is in the email doesn't matter.

If these emails are regularly getting through the spam filter of your provider, I'd suggest changing providers, they're software is crap.

Oh, and the letters aren't RANDOM, they will be exactly the same for exactly the same word. Article writer might want to look up what random means.

What can $10 stretch to these days? Lunch... or access to international airport security systems

"In addition, sysadmins should consider blocking RDP connections over the open internet."

SHOULD?? No, MUST be blocked. Where and on what planet is it a good idea to allow remote administration access to a window machine without having to go through a VPN? I'm truly astonished that computer security has dropped so far that this is even a thing.

Telegram crypto-chat chap says Apple has 'restricted' its app updates worldwide

Re: Bye bye Apple?

?? Google basically completely withdrew from China. No Google services are available/work in mainland China.

What exactly are you referring to?

HALF of air passengers leave phones on ... yet STILL no DEATH PLUNGE

Re: Connecting from 10km up.

Actually in more rural areas it's very common for cell sites to use pretty much just whip antennas (pretty close to omnidirectional), so it's entirely conceivable to make a connection.

FWIW I've seen it work from 30,000 feet.

TTYL

AT&T randomly letting some customers use FaceTime on cellular

Exactly my question.

I've NEVER seen someone use facetime. Not once.

The only time I've EVER tried it is to see if my MAC connects with my wife's 4. It worked. We played with it once, and haven't tried it again.

I undestand the argument people have, but I really would love to know how many people actually USE facetime. I don't think the number is very high.

4G networks can screw up cable TV

Only 4 Watts?

Only 4 Watts?

25bDm is 316mW, you were pumping more then 10 TIMES the power into your STB, I don't see this as any meaningful datapoint.

It is exceedingly poor design on the STBs side to not shield their equipment enough to withstand 316mW at 1M. The CableCo's have noone but themselves to blame.

Google Cr-48: Inside the Chrome OS 'unstable isotope'

The Real World

Many on this forum, and many reviewers don't seem capable of stepping back for a moment and seeing the world as it is.

So, here I am to enlighten.

If you look at you average "young person", they are already at a point where they don't need much "local storage". Most of what they do is ALREADY in the "cloud".

Look at the iPhone. Hate it or not, it's very popular. The iPhone doesn't have a file explorer. While it does have local storage, many use very little of it, and those that do use the local storage as a mirror of what's in the cloud (your iTunes library).

As for young people using their laptops, almost EVERYTHING they do is online, they don't use an email client, they use MSN or Yahoo mail. Photos/videos? Facebook and Youtube. The only time they use local storage is when they're uploading something to an online album.

I myself am an old codger compared to them, and yet most of what I do isn't local. While I don't use "the cloud" as much, I do remotely connect to my home servers for most of what I do. Think of it as a private cloud. The laptops/desktops I use don't really contain much data, it's all centrally stored on my server, so when I'm on the other side of the planet a quick VPN login and I've got all my email, docs and media right there.

My cell phone? Only thing I have stored on that that isn't in the cloud are the demos videos my phone came with.

While CromeOS is very "limiting" to some here, for the masses it offers pretty much exactly what they want a computer for these days: a portal to their data.

TTYL

Calls for US nudie perv scanner 'opt-out day'

Consider this

"Bunch. Of. Idiots."?

Consider this: a rape victim. How would a rape victim potentially feel about this?

They'd have two options: let someone see them naked, or let someone grope them.

Either option sound good to you?

What about a child abuse victim? Spousal abuse? What about the kid that has been tormented for years by his or her peers about their bodies?

Yes, most of us aren't fortunately in these shoes, but when a "screening" technology starts victimizing people (directly or indirectly) who have already had horrible things done to them I think it's time to draw a line in the sand.

I'm not even going to mention the "slippery slope" aspect, because we're already there. When these machines were introduced they said you'd always have the "pat down" option. What they failed to mention is the pat down option would be modified into a disgustingly violating action, purposely so to "encourage" people to step in to the Nudifier.

Sickening what people in the "free world" are willing to tolerate.

Spectrum refarming: What's it got to do with you?

What happened?

For the longest time Europe was FAR ahead of North America when it came to cell phone technology.

Now you're talking about finally repurposing 2G spectrum for 3G use (some we did here a few years ago) and LTE class tech won't be coming till 2016 (it's here now in very limited form)?

What happened?

Google's Street View broke Canadian privacy laws

I don't get it

If I'm yelling out my window my personal business, and someone drives by and writes down what I say, what person in the right mind would consider me right in expecting what I yelled to be held private?

This data was siphoned from OPEN UNSECURED networks. The only blame here is the people who set up their networks.

Why do we have to baby every single person on the planet?

Hackers spoof car warning system

Not all are wireless

Something not mentioned is the tire pressure monitoring system on many cars ISN'T WIRELESS.

The computer just uses the ABS sensors on the weeks to detect a wheel that rotates faster then the others to trigger a flat tire warning.

So, for those cars there's nothing to exploit with regards to that system.

Southpaws up in arms over iPhone 4

Very simple

If you CONSIDERED a car where the lights shorted out every time you touched the steering wheel, wouldn't you choose a DIFFERENT car?

There's LOTs of options out there other then the iCrapPhone, consider them.

Should all hard drives be encrypted?

Foolish

Except of course that the swap file contains TONS of personal data. Whatever you open (emails, word documents) is stored in memory, lots of that ends up in the swap file.

If you don't encrypt the swap partition all an attacker has to do is pull the plug either on a running system or one in standby. Pull the drive and read the file, personal data say bye-bye.

The swap HAS to be encrypted, there is no choice there.

Note also that this sort of technique can even be used to pull data out of DRAMs, put the chips out of a running system and read them with another specialized device and much of your data will still be there. ALOT harder to acquire the necessary hardware, but easy if you have the right equipment.

Lords: Analogue radio must die

Radio (be it analog or digital) is dead

Was in the UK a few years ago, drove from London to Edinburgh and back.

I tried listening to the radio, I couldn't stand it.

Fortunately I had my Sirius Sat radio with me with tons of content I recorded off the bird here in North America and listened to that for the whole journey.

Radio as a medium is dead, it offers NOTHING above anything else, and has alot of stuff people don't want. Every once in a while I try listening to terrestrial radio here, I don't make it very far.

It may sound ridiculous to some, but I say don't mock until you try it: pay radio is the future.

DAB? It's just another stab by a dying industry to stay alive.

Nerd alert: First Lucid Lynx Ubuntu beta fun

mp3 is the only worthy choice

Give me a break, you're talking about how this is the version of linux for consumers, and then harp that the music store offers it's tracks in mp3 format? Listen, ogg may be "better" to some, but the fact is mp3 is more the good enough for the general public, and if you try and have a music store that doesn't sell mp3s you WILL fail in this day and age.

Apple says Google Voice is on hold, not cut off

Like the media companies...

The phone companies have to wake up. There are new technologies out that that people want (VOIP being a prime example). By artificially limiting consumers they are just shooting themselves in the foot.

Like the music industry has finally begun to realize, consumers don't tolerate artificial limits for very long. The mobile phone companies just have to realize that the future is IP for transport. The sooner they do, the sooner phones will really start becoming useful.