Posts by Ammaross Danan

Mac App Store giving away pay apps for free

Title

Exactly. They should have been checking for the correct AppleID receipt and not just any receipt. However, with how locked-down the iPhone/Pad/Pod are, it's doubtful anyone could have swapped receipts around anyway and exploited this weakness. Trying to push a walled garden into a space that is fairly more "open" will lead to these kind of snafus. I entirely blame the developer however.

And you PC people, Steam has been running this kind of "app store" for a long time. So no, this isn't some thing Steve invented. If he patents his "app store to a desktop" idea, Steam will likely be first in line to groin-kick him into place.

iPhone-wielding chumps rush to give data to phish sites

Nope

I think the "8 times more likely" figure might be a bit skewed. Has this company taken into account mobile market share? Perhaps weight the percent of visitors using X OS by their reported percentile of online traffic?

Example (using made up numbers):

If iPhones contribute 40% of a mobile website's traffic, and BB only 10%, there's a 4-to-1 right there. So an 8-to-1 (8 times) visitor rate of iPhone to BB is actually only 2x as likely. Did these "researchers" actually provide such weights to their figures, or did they just assume that they sent phishes to exactly the same number of BB vs iPhone users and counted who visited...?

Called 999 recently? They've got your number

Audio

Perhaps it would be best not to mention how long they retain the audio recording of your 999 call.... you know, with voice recognition, voiceprint analysis and such these days.

Why did my server just die?

Admittance

Therefore, it would have been most helpful in the article to have written:

"I had willfully removed any resource caps and priority shares on my virtual machines to better see the resource demands of my VMs. It was this that caused all the VMs on the testbed server to flatline, not an inherent flaw in Virtualization Technology. I was asking for it."

VMs

My question is this: why was the solitary VM allowed to dominate the entire VM server to cause the other VMs to crawl in the first place? A virtualization environment has plenty of controls to prevent a VM from hogging resources or infringing on the performance of neighboring VMs. First off, the CPU, Disk, and likely network "shares" (VMWare) should be set either higher, or at the very least, higher priority, than the report/test servers. Likely, the test server should be set to "low." Also, CPU utilization can be capped, which is also recommended, to prevent a single VM from stealing all the MHz allocation. These, I believe, can be edited on the fly too, so a VM that red-lines the server can be adjusted accordingly so the system can return to normal until the process finishes.

Video games go off quicker than tomatoes

Dodgy comparison to cars

Sure, there's "off-the-lot" depreciation on everything. However, I could try reselling a nice '66 Camero in "like new" condition with 50km on the odometer ("played only once") for far more than the original price...

On another note: cars are multi-purpose (utility, recreation, etc) whereas games are simply recreation. Just as one wouldn't stay on vacation for several years, we're talking about different timeframes with cars and games. Games are popular (and playable) for a few months, perhaps a year. Vehicles are ment to be used for many, many years. Might as well consider them vs cellphone turnarounds. Try selling your "feature phone" from 3 years ago now and see how much you get. Anyone able to get anywhere near retail price for the original iPhone?

Wireless HD video sticks demoed

USB Power

Now to just get a powered USB hub soley to power the 3 or 4 HDMI devices off the back of the TV. Now the problem is, why don't they make a 90-degree version for those rear-facing HDMI ports (instead of some of the nicer downward- or sideways-facing ones)?

Beastly Android will batter Apple's iOS beauty

Title

Definately agree with the features thing. Granted, there's many of add-ons for the iPhone, such as every iCrap device/speaker-set out there, but when you have to tote around special connectors and devices because your phone doesn't have a microUSB (almost universal nowadays) or be screwed due to not having a microSD card slot to store more 8MP pictures (oh yeah, the iPhone still doesn't have that....) then the obvious choice for a non-drool-on-self consumer is an Android device.

Intel touts 'Sandy Bridge' video chops

Core i7

If you're not thinking it's worth waiting until the release, you haven't checked the price points. Go ahead and buy your Core i7 and get ripped off. A $310 (US$) 2600K Sandy Bridge part runs (stock) 10% or better than the i7-960. Likely the "old gen" Core i parts are going to get slashed shortly.....

/consumer purchasing fail

Boasts

800 times faster might be alluding to their encrypt/decrypt stuff, which has significant gains, and is only available in the most recent batches of CPUs from Intel, therefore qualifying for the "most."

As for the 60% faster, it does happen, if the chip is OCed to 4.6GHz (yes, very easily possible) and pitched against a stock-speed i7-980X or the like, in /some/ benches. As for GPU, you're only getting a Radeon 5450 built-in, so no needing to buy a $40 discrete gfx card to stuff into that mobo you love that didn't come with an IGP solution...

From Antennagate to WikiLeaks: the year in tech lunacy

"Show Stoppers"

"...and ignores a few problems that others see as show stoppers."

Forgive me, but loss of connectivity seems to be a large "show stopper" for just about anyone (excepting you of course) for a connectivity device (ala "smartphone").

Standard smartphone charger to dominate in two years

You sir

I take it you didn't read the part about being "based" on the microUSB spec? Likely, the "based on" part accounts for extra amps/volts/etc for in-use charging. Likely it would take lower power or higher wall-charger power. Of course, the iPhone won't use the usb connection for data, just for charging, as everything has to go through their special connector. Else they'd piss off a load of iGottahaves that bought the "old" <=iPhone4 accessories for 2x what they're worth.

IBM races bits along a nanowire track

Reverse numbering

Your calcs land you right near 4015, however you failed in that average movie runtimes are not your reverse-engineered approximation of 2hrs, 11min, etc. Average runtime lands right near 97-118min, bringing the actual number closer to 5000 movies.

Asus to punt Core i5 Windows 7 tablet

Title

Stick a flash drive in it, and perhaps some good on-screen keyboard functionality and they might be on to something. Of course, the screen would have to be some form of LED-based (if it's LCD, they're lost already) to get some decent battery life out of it. If they strip the fluff from Win7, they might get away with this "tablet" yet. I can see students taking notes on one of these. Perhaps a meetingPad or the like. Definately a "surf while watching TV" friend. Now, if they can make it LESS than the cost of a full-on laptop, we might be getting somewhere.

Apple iPad 2 said to sport über speaker

Revenue

Having a USB port doesn't necessarily open it to hacking. It's how the BIOS and the like treats the USB (as a bootable location or the like) that's the problem. The i[insert device here] was designed to upgrade the OS from the iConnector, thus made this process open to hacking (for instance).

Likely, since Apple gets a cut of any device branded with an "iDevice" or with an iConnector, they likely don't want to give that up by allowing any old slutty USB device to potentially connect to their Walled Garden Device. Nah, they'll keep selling licensing, and companies will keep charging 2x$$ for iConnecting products. Don't believe me? Check out the pricing for a Monster-branded CarPlay (fm transmitter) with a mini-headset jack vs the iConnector version. And no, the iConnector version doesn't have controls for audio playback either.

MS warns over zero-day IE bug

Windows Update

Apparently, you've never seen/used the Windows Update feature baked into WinXP-Win7? Last I checked, IE was only necessary (on WinXP only) to manually download patches from MS. Since Vista, the OS simply uses the Windows Update interface to present patches to install. Even in XP, you can cause Windows Update to manually fetch patches. No need for IE.

Responsible Disclosure

The art of Responsible Disclouser means MS is notified before the general public, and thus, they likely have reports of other means of bypassing ASLR and DEP, but are currently working on patches/workarounds before it can become Public Knowledge.

Microwaved hard disc, run-over PC and other data disasters

Recoverability

I definately agree with " for definitions of 'backup' that include 'being able to restore same'."

I had to recover some data from a tape written with an arcane version of ArcServe. (guess how long it took me to figure out it was ArcServe, and what version.... and how I came about getting a copy with key...)

Since then, I've been hesistant to entrust my data to proprietary backup systems. It's always fun to have to not only backup the data, but to keep backups of the equipment used to write the data, plus the software with which to read the data back....any of which can fail along the way.

So what can one use? Well, tape is the go-to for large archives of data (multiple terrabytes), just remember that your tape is likely dead after 5 years. Perhaps 10 if kept in "ideal" storage conditions. <3TB of data? Hard disk is a good way to go. SATA may not be around forever, but I'm willing to bet it will outlive a 5-10yr lifespan of a tape. The hard disk itself may last as long or longer than the interface technology (think how long it took to kill onboard floppy controllers....and you can still get USB fdds). With data on a hard disk, it's definately speedy to recover random files. Tape does have the benefit of on-the-fly encryption and any number of protective measures....what what if your drive that you "backed up" (retired with the tapes) fails to work when dusted off? How will you decrypt your data now? At least with hard drives, the encryption can be software-driven. Perhaps TrueCrypt v6? Win/Lin compatible, and shouldn't be hard to dust off or download a copy of Ubuntu9 if it came down to it. Can't rightly say that about Symantec's BackupExec 2010. Since Win98 can't run on some newer hardware, it may be a bit difficult getting an LTO drive into a VM to be able to run your old BackupExec on an aging Win2k3.

Of course, it's all a moot point if one simply considers >7yr-old data "dead" and destroys it. Depending on your area of business, one can't do that. Home users? Likely won't care about anything deleted more than 6 months ago and a couple USB HDDs to cycle through would be plenty (just keep one a family/friend's house! encrypted preferrably).

/end rant/evangelizing.

Why?

If you removed the platter in the first place, just take an awl to it then give it a good hammering. The data may technically be there, but with the drive warped, dented, and scratched beyond recognition, it's likely the data isn't usable/retrievable anymore. Especially since it won't be able to spin at any decent rpm and allow read heads to pass over safely....

The comment of [sic]

Unable to determine the level of sarcasm in the previous post, I'll post a brief about the use of [sic]:

A bit of wording enclosed in square brackets [such as these] is used in journalism to denote editor's comments [Thanks for the ack. -Ed].

Sometimes, in particularly sarcastic writings as found here on The Reg, the author will use it as a stab at the sudo-journo stylings of would-be "proper" rags, pointing out terrible ("unprofessional") spelling or grammar. Therefore, if the article had sum impropur spelting [see? a "sic" would be due here], then you can ding the author for it, within a direct quote.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Agreed

The author must be an idiot thinking the extra 0.2% crit from keeping the ilvl264 gear as opposed to 305+ gear with way more stam and exp/hit rating was worthwhile. I found myself swapping out my T10/ICC25 gear by the time I left Hyjal. Deepholm 2nd-shard quest line gives a very nice 2-hander that beats anything prior. I think there's a few fail points for such oversights.

The new environments and the like do make the day, as well as the difficulty. Welcome back CC-required trash pulls! And I think they learned a thing or two in WotLK about boss encounters and have put that complexity into heroic 5mans. Cheers all around.

The main disappointment (for me at least) was with all the new race/class combos, Worgen could not be my two main classes: paladin and shaman. :(

Sluggish economy means hard times for US executioners

Society's Ills

Without getting on a whole Nature-vs-Nurture argument, a bit of Googling should point you down some decent "profiling" statistics that show the commonalities behind serial rapists/murderers (serial being the key, since "fewer" people would [should?] be opposed to repeat offenders being put to death, as opposed to those one-off types). Of course, draconian regulations that prevent abusive, single-parent households from having children is a bit much, but just as you can lead a horse to water, but can't make him drink, you can't force children to pay attention in schooling either, no matter how "good" it is, or how much funding it receives.

In short: "Rather, they would prefer money to go to...job creation, crime prevention, schools..." This would definately help the more needs-based crimes (theft due to monetary need, other than drug money..., etc) however "crime prevention" would also be detering repeat offenders. And sorry, "even roads and transportation" wouldn't do anything to cut down on the criminal element unless they're giving out bus passes for free....

MSE releases revamped freebie malware scanner

Sorry, FAIL

"I don't want it to prescan websites (since I'm unlikely to click on them, and it should protect me if I do anyway)"

While it's true it should protect you from "install this!" type websites, it won't however, protect you from true exploit pages that cram code down a buffer-overflow. This is why "pre-scanning" is important.

Server workloads to go '70% virtual' by 2014

70%

I would assume that the 70% VMs are /actual/ VMs, and thus the remaining 30% would be a mix of single-OS installs and the more fringe "cloud" setups? Or would a server joined into a distributed cluster count toward the "VM" figure?

/reg, where's my "?" icon?

Intel and AMD in third quarter stalemate

Waiting

I'm just waiting for the good-ole days to come back when AMD's top CPU actually beat Intel's top design. Even an X6 1100T falls short of an i7-965

Is cloud data secure?

Security

One other point not mentioned is security by obscurity. Google warehouses are a large target. Just look at the "China" hacks vs Google, et al. Does anyone even know the IP to my data? Doubtful. A decent firewall and Snort should provide enough of a probe-deterant for any passers-by.

As for physical security, small/mid biz can protect their data well enough to sleep at night. Sure, there's no key-card access logging nor eye/palm scanners (sometimes!), but a key that only 1 guy has is sometimes all you need.

Nokia sues Apple in European courts

I'll be the first to say...

...Apple asked for it by suing others first. You know, because people should innovate and not just steal others IP.

/mines the one with flame retardant on it

A question of performance

SaaS vs In-House

There are merits of both SaaS and In-House, but some blatent things are obvious, but unaddressed:

1) Network connectivity. Sure, a SaaS datacenter has DS3, or OC12+ lines and the like, but what about YOUR business? Business-class cable modem? DSL perhaps? Splurge for a T1? This is what /most/ small-to-mid-sized businesses use (they're the most likely to use SaaS anyway, right?). Outages on these forms of connections happen more frequently than for SaaS datacenters. Have hosted email? Probably best. Hosted business-critical apps? Definately not. Imagine not being able to schedule or lookup appointments for the Mac Genius bar for even 2 hours. Imagine if your entire billing software is "in the cloud" and you lose your internet connection for half a business day?

2) Backups. I admit I haven't had the need to request a backup from a SaaS service, but I doubt they use CDP (continuous data protection [to steal a Symantec buzzword]). What if you needed to review files that were deleted over a month ago? Better yet, what about that file you typed up 3 days ago, lived for 6 hours, and was printed & deleted before end-of-day? Will they troll your (hopefully existant) backups and recover that singular document for you? My current in-house backup strategy can, and fairly easily too. Since *most* data recovery is needed within 24 hours, and all the rest but a few percent within 7 days, having a backup system you KNOW can fulfill your needs in that regard is crucial.

3) Privacy. Data breaches don't happen much, but Silverpop is a good example of why you may not want to just have your data out there. A small/mid biz is a lot harder to hack if no one knows your IP. (hosted websites are another good SaaS use, mostly)

4) SaaS is great if you don't have a knowledgable IT-staffer, which is the case of many small/mid biz (sadly), since it will provide a company with many assurances that you won't get by electing the one guy in the office that owns TWO computers as the tech go-to guy.

SaaS and the Cloud are great, but they're just buzzwords for client/server networking, just on the internet instead of the server closet.

World of Warcraft bot ban ticks off world of critics

Title

"But the bot in question only allowed plays to robot through standard activities"

Yes, the advertised use for the bot is grinding "low" levels, however, there are plenty of gold farmers and account looting bots that means "Glider" may not have such a passive dark-sibling. If we allow (turn a blind eye) to "low level" botting, where does it stop? lv20? Allow them to run low-level dungeons too?

Granted, it technically is Blizzard's fail here though. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for them to do a bot-weight Admin system in that factors overall playtime in a given timeframe, duration of play sessions, time-of-day of play sessions, types of actions during sessions (farming whelps or grinding mobs primarily?), use of in-game communications and social functions (member of a guild?), etc. Even a bit of ping-pong queries at the game client. For high-scoring suspected botters, a GM can pick tops from a list and shadow them, perhaps an automated in-game whisper for response. Teleport them on top of a mountain and see how their bot reacts. Granted, extreme measures of manipulation are reserved for high-scoring bots on this measure, but they can get temp-flagged as "non-bot" for a few months once proven legit.

Regardless of who's FAIL it is, DMCA is the wrong law to bring in. I'd definately side more on the unauthorized access to protected computer systems. It's tantamount to reverse engineering my VPN tunnel and building your own VPN client to access my network and interact with my servers. Client/Server communcations, be they encrypted or not, are the same in either case: you (client) send/receive info to my (server) network. If you shouldn't be there, and I gave narrow means of access, YOU are breaking the law by circumventing my client.

Critical IE update in biggest ever Patch Tuesday

Statistics

"Also, Microsoft has now released 106 security bulletins in 2010 – the first time topping the century mark since the Patch Tuesday program began. The next closest was 78 in 2006 and 2008."

I'm surprised that no one has pointed out that since XP (SP3) is still under active support, that MS now has THREE revisions of its OS platform to support. Normally, XP would have been fully retired by now (such as 95/98/2000 was in '06 and '07), thus with 3 OSes to support, I have no doubt the numbers would be higher. If you haven't noticed, many of the alerts regard the aging WinXP.

Windows 7 really was some girl's idea, rules ASA

Mythbuntu

MythTV has problems with encoded content, such as the standard "digital cable" that's being punted around here. No more analog channels, no more MythTV :( Shame I can't find a decent setup that doesn't require serial wiring to the channel-changing hookups on the back of the cable-provider-provided box. I'm sure Windows has the same problem though, so moot point?

First 'cryovolcano' discovered on Titan, ice moon of Saturn

Temperature shift

The difference is in temperature. On earth, volcanic vents are quite hot, whereas the "volcanic vents" on Titan could be merely 1*C or even less since it's pressurized.... Needless to say, they won't necessarily be the comfy-cozy hot-tub conditions that we have on Earth, so I hope the microbial life evolved parkas too....

Toshiba releases killer SSD

Pricing

It's an enterprise, "special" SLC SSD with a SAS/SATA 6Gbps interface. Therefore, the price falls into the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" category.

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

Agreed

I could see such a machine being potentially more useful (and cheaper!) than, say, a Tablet. However, I don't agree with Google's mindset of a home PC is/will be nothing more than a web portal. Perhaps for a 15-yr-old who myTwitFaceSpaces all day, but not for me. Accessing your 4MB+-per-pic high-res photo album would be ludicrous from the cloud, not to mention your home movies.... imagine how long a "zone load" would be for <insert favorite game here> if it had to d/l it each time? That and 100MB wouldn't be enough to browse/edit more than 12 photo album pictures.

'Wear levelling' - a bedroom aid for multi-layer cell Flash

SSDs

SSDs are currently a good option. They have a MTBF that's actually HIGHER than some/most HDDs, and will last far longer than their usefulness, just like my 60GB ATA/100 HDD (that failed btw) is no longer useful compared to a 500GB SATA2 HDD.

Therefore, don't NOT buy SSDs due to "immenent" failure, but rather on their cost/GB vs purpose.

Flash is not that reliable

Consistancy

First off, these numbers likely reflect drives sold more than a year ago, when capacities were <64GB in common drives. Since it's a retailer, I would also assume they don't peddle out the high-end drives as much (at all?). With a small amount of GB to play with, the drives are likely being used as system drives with a swap file (as default) on the C:\ drive as well. After a year (or more) of use, it wouldn't surprise me to see some drives start to buckle. Wouldn't put it past these home users to still be running WinXP too, and thus not getting the Win7 benefit of sector alignment, etc, not to mention the imaging programs that are sometimes shipped with the drives (most disk imagine programs don't take alignment into account *cough* Acronis *cough*).

Without full info of model numbers (at the least), this data is, as stated, a peek, but far from useful. Other question would be: is the numbers shown the % vs other drives, or %vs drives-of-type sold? One would assume that the return-failure-rate would be % vs drives-of-type, but one can't be caught a fool because of an assumption.

Join in the Wikileaks DDoS war from your iPhone or iPad

Nope

That's called slashdotting. Not necessarily sending an email/comment, but crippling none-the-less. Anyway, IANAL but it's the automated and repetative nature that makes DDoSing illegal.

/Logic Fail for you

Steve Ballmer proposed $15bn Facebook acquisition

Because...

...no one else wants to poke the dead horse with sticks.

Even with a $15bn investment into a phoneOS isn't guaranteed to fix it. It takes creative thinking (hey, actually higher some high-school students to do some concept drawings), rather than depending upon die-hard MS users (developers/concept artists) to get a fresh perspective. I would have told them flat out their main screen blows chunks, esp with the idiot move of not allowing other "apps" to update their icon, not to mention some MS ones that are static too... The actual "app" screens, those aren't too bad.

Lost ancient civilisation's ruins lie beneath Gulf, says boffin

Of Course!

Of course it's Aliens! Didn't you watch the documentary with Nicholas Cage: "Knowing"?

Rivers

"the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are both mentioned"

Ever consider the rivers received their names based on the rivers mentioned in the Bible, rather than the other way around?

Microsoft unveils 'do not track' option for IE9

Users

I can just see the horde of users who disabled all cookies but forgot to whitelist their email/bank page and call to complain about why they can't log in....

How I went from punting PCs to betting a quarter billion on Betfair

A break

As a break in the tide of "online gambling" sentiments, let's look at something more straight-forward:

The title reads he's betting a "quarter billion" on Betfair, however, the article states "and currently has £250,000 in his account." Looks like a quarter MILLION to me. Might want to correct this error to reduce the sensationalizing title.

Google aims Nexus S smartphone at US, UK

Specs

"the Nexus S "supports HD-like multimedia content". So almost HD, but not quite, then."

A 480x800 display can't pull 1080p, sorry. Perhaps "HD-like" means supports clear images at 480x800@29.95fps, which would make the aspect ratio 15:9, rather than the "HD" 16:9. That's "-like" enough for me, except I'd have just injected a bit of black space above and below the vid to get a real 16:9 ratio...

Also a shame the camera takes a step backwards from the 8MP on the likes of HTC's phones to a mid-range 5MP "good enough for the iPhone" camera.

Bombshell in platterland: WD tried to buy Seagate

Backups

Since you're likely storing both of those drives on your desk at home, I would suggest where you store your drives will be more important that the company that manufactured them. It's unlikely that two drives from the same company (same batch even) will die at the exact same time AND your primary computer dying as well.

Diary of a Not-spot: One man's heroic struggle for broadband

Antenna

One could simply look for a good old-fashioned antenna used by decommissioned radio stations and the like. A simple 3-vertical poles connected by a triangle lattice making one very tall, sturdy antenna that requires guy-wires to keep errect and stable. Mount/Aim the transceiver and hoist the antenna. Just where to get one....

THE TRUTH on the Californian NASA POISON ALIENS

Evolution

Wasn't this the exact concept behind the movie "Evolution" with the use of Selenium to kill off the rampant lifeform(s)?

Either way, who's the boffin that decided to artificially limit our search parameters? Might as well call it earth-like-lifeforms-in-SPACCCCEEEEEE instead of "alien lifeforms"

WinPho7 jailbreak kit locked down by Redmond 'dev mojo' man

Secret: (The developer was probably paid off)

"Apple...has managed to keep jailbroken iPhones, and thus software piracy, to a minimum"

I may not be the "best" example, but when shops offer to jailbreak your iPhone for you, just so you'll sign up for their network instead, and when 70% of the people I know that use an iPhone are jailbroken...I just don't see this "minimum" bit....perhaps 90% of the people just use the iPhone as-is because they don't care to do anything more than just have the iPhone. (yes yes, warranties, plan-switching, etc hassle...)

"and by ensuring the legitimate app store is suitably stocked with the applications people want"

Like fart apps and banning porn. Last I checked, most blokes would prefer a porn app to a fart app. Or perhaps an app for their favorite local radio station? There's no app for that....

On a non-troll note, the ChevronWP7 developer was probably just paid off by MS until they can find a better way to not lose $99 per developer contract.

Self-correcting memory arrives at last

Title

I hope it has some form of CRC-error flag to send along with the proper data so the controller knows about failing cells rather than being unknowingly failing.

Hackers poison well of open-source FTP app

Alternates

Glad I use vsftpd :)

BURNING LUST for SEXY BUSTY BLONDES - Science explains

Title

Ever consider that the "strongest, and most fit males that have the male-equivalent evolutionary 'ideal' traits to attract women" are those ones that get those buxom blondes? The rest of us "normal" folk have to resort to those "more average" brown-haired, flat-chested types (or any "lesser" variation thereof).