Posts by kneedragon

Chrome trumps all comers in reported vulnerabilities

I do think this is a trifle misleading. Micro$oft used to top the vulns list 100:1, because it was the obvious target. In many ways, Chrome (or Chromium) has become that. Many people are using it, so white hats and black hats zero in on it and do pizza and caffeine and attack it. Look hard enough for flaws, and you will find them.

Turnbull says big telcos should subsidise bush comms

Public Mischief.

It might pay to be a bit nicer to this man. Perhaps he doesn't know what TCP/IP stands for, but he might just be the new PM. I bet he knows what that stands for. ... Pubic Mustering?

Australian politicians 'resisted' debate on new spook powers

I read the Roxon diatribe this morning, and mostly agreed with her. But on this subject, I am (for once) glad politicians are lazy and slow and not keen to meddle. I forget exactly what powers and data retention policy the Spooks and police had asked for, but you can bet it was 3 times what they had and double what they thought they needed. In this limited and specific area, I'm glad the politicians for once sat down and shut up. ... It didn't make Nicola happy, though... She'll get over it. I was quite worried the Labour Party were going to get wiped out at the last, but they got together enough support to earn a normal, dignified defeat after two terms, and will now endure 2 terms in opposition. Hopefully the new bloke will not upset the other children as badly as Kevin, who seemed to inspire some liking and admiration from a distance, but none at all from the people immediately around him.

That earth-shattering NSA crypto-cracking: Have spooks smashed RC4?

I should be good and read every comment, but after 15 min... Can't say I told you so, because I didn't, or not so you'd have heard me, but I realised twenty years ago that networks are watched, and that Windows is not secure, and even if you have an open source system, you're only secure as long as nobody really wants in. I started to study computers and networks at a tertiary level in the mid 90s, and we were told, by lecturers, security is relative. If you have something they want, and they have the resources to get it, they can, and sadly, there are a number of things you can do to make it a little more difficult for them, but you can't stop them, and in part, all you do by going to big trouble over security and encryption, is highlight that you have something to hide. The fact that you've employed strong encryption is a red flag. "Be good, be honest, be law abiding, but above all, if you can't do that, then do any and all your mischief AWAY from any computers. You can make computers somewhat secure, but that's all."

I did get very suspicious about Microsoft, when the entire weight of the US government seemed to be about to come down on them over anti-trust... and then it all just went away, like they'd come to some agreement...

Australia's anti-smut internet filter blueprint lasts LESS THAN A DAY

To tell the truth, I'm a little bit relieved. I seem to remember hearing something about this nearly a year ago, and I've been dreading it. I thought it was a done deal. To have it fall over at this late hours is a bit of a bonus. Now if we can just get the libs to take on the fibre-to-the-home version of the ABN, I can nearly live with with Tony Abbot for a term or two. I'd like to think that won't be needed, but I fear it is going to happen.

Oh, and to answer an earlier post, which way do politicians rotate in the bowl up there?

Map of Tasmania to be redrawn

What a headline. What an anticlimax.

Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot: Nice, but necessary?

gnome classic-fallback.

With 11.04, I took an instant dislike to Unity and changed back to classic at the first reboot.

With 11.10 that wasn't possible. So for the first hour I tried to get used to it and live with it. I spent the next hour tearing my hair out and trying to fix and adjust even basic things. No go.Unity is HOPELESS!! Two minutes on google - read some solutions, installed gnome 3 added a classic-fallback desktop. That's still a slightly backward step, because some of the functionality that I liked on gnome 2.x is gone in 3, but at least it looks like and feels like my desktop.

What a pain the ... I'm just about ready to go to a plain vanilla Debian / Gnome install. The advantages of using Ubuntu over some other distribution are pretty much gone.

Fedora 16: Linux home for lost Ubuntu GNOMEs

fuss?

I don't see what the fuss is. I didn't like what I was hearing about unity, so I had a quick look on google for how to switch it off. Simple - one setting on boot, once. Fixed. Then I didn't like what I was hearing about them switching that off, so I went and got gnome3. It came from the Canonical repositories, it installed without a single hitch or question, and it picked up all the settings I already had - including having my buttons where Bill Gates and Henry Ford put them. The only clue it's there is an extra splash screen during boot, which is only there for a second anyway.

I'm not a tech guru - I'm not even what you'd call a power user. It's not that hard, really.

RedBubble’s Nazi trouble

Humour: Fail.

I'm an Australian. I have Jewish antecedents, several of them. I have no German antecedents.

For goodness sake, guys - grow a sense of humour! What are you going to campaign against next? Hogan's Heroes? Mel Brooks and the Hitler Rap? Get over it. It's not pro nazi, it's satire.

US air force has new scramjet hypersonic plane plans

nit picking

You say "As speed climbs through the low Mach numbers this causes unacceptable levels of drag to build up, which is why the SR-71 couldn't beat Mach 3.5 or so."

That does not sit well with what I was told, which was that upper speed limits on the SR71 were imposed the same way as on the X15 - both were thermal. The engines worked a treat, and could have powered the craft significantly faster. They were a bit tricky, because the point where they ran best and at maximum fuel efficiency was a cat's whisker away from the point where they flamed out, so getting the best from them was a bit of a nervy experience, but they were no way the limit to top speed. At operational speed, the whole exterior of the craft glowed a dull red, with leading edges tending to orange and even yellow hot. Even titanium does not have unlimited structural integrity at those temperatures. In addition, many things inside the aircraft don't like to get that hot, like the fuel, the tyres, (think about that one for a minute) and the pilot. Various systems and techniques were employed to keep these things fairly cool but they had limits, and those limits were exceeded long before the engines ran out of go.

How you plan to get even a missile - let alone a manned craft - to live at those temperatures is the problem. Better engines would be nice, but we had good enough engines in the mid 1960s. That's not what's holding this field back.

PARIS joins the 17-mile-high club

No.

No, that is incorrect. We'd like our PARIS to work at least as well as yours.

Also...

Being the big PARIS and elReg fan I am, it would be unsporting of me to point out that the Qantas engines which are failing, were made by Rolls Royce, so I won't mention it.

Mozilla brews Firefox add-on for audio-video recording

M$ baiting.

Does anybody remember a couple of weeks ago, M$ was grated a patent on the use of hardware acceleration on video encoding in web browser plug ins? Any takers on where this is headed?

LOST Vulture One PARIS spaceplane FOUND!!!

One small step.

As a patriotic Australian, I feel it's only my duty at this moment to mock and belittle your efforts.

... Aw, stuff it! Good on yers. I've enjoyed the whole adventure. I hope Richard Noble feels suitably inspired. One Giant leap for Playmanaut kind.

PARIS HAS LANDED!!! Epic supra-atmos flight ends

?googlemaps data

I must be reading the info at google wrong, because it seems to say that the little green men have cunningly stashed the paris transponder in the chase vehicle, and for some time, forgot to switch it off.

Where is the BOFH these days? Not taking a junket in the s of Spain by any chance?

Two-year wait for Windows 8, MS blurts

Well spotted, young apprentice

... and I mostly agree. Last time I looked, VMware was free for 30 days, then worth 1 arm + 0.5 legs. Also, Ubuntu has a perfectly good free VM that does what I want anyway. My point was that in this instance, M$ would do well to repeat their sins with Netscape and include a good VM out of the box, and get it right. Then, we could get a free XP to go in it. If you're going to support old software by way of a VM, then you should supply the VM and the OS free, and keep plugging the holes in them, free, for as long as people want.

What I really want, is a brand new OS from M$, without all the legacy junk. Do what they did with the original NT project - start from scratch, using an industry standard language like ANSI C, and build a right-by-design OS for the 21st century. Then provide your developer community with all the tools needed to build right-by-design software on it.

You've got to draw a line under the past somewhere, and start fresh. That's what I want. Doubt that I'll get it though.

suggestions list

Dear Mr Ballmer,

Could you please:

1. Make sure that 8 comes with a fully working VM type XP compatibility mode? Including hardware accelerated graphics and cut n paste in and out of the VM? Make really sure it works properly.

2. Go back to the drawing board and design a modern operating system from the top down. Make a list of all the things that were wrong in Win95 that are STILL wrong, and fix them.

In this way, you can have support for old software, and finally fix the blundering kludgefest that is windoze.

PARIS grounded by whipping wind

In the meantime.

While we wait with baited breath for the conditions to improve (and the brandy to evaporate), perhaps we should review the history of other's failures, and check that we're not overlooking something basic.

http://science.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/10/24/1514250

Microsoft backs NASA's open source cloud kit

paranoid

Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

OOo's put the willies up Microsoft

Yes

Yes, of course they work - which is WHY microsoft are dissing them.

Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed

Partitions.

Here we have a review of a new shirt, but the reviewer didn't like the collar. So now we have a protracted debate on the merits of broad v narrow collars. Taylors, shop assistants and dry cleaners are getting ready to do battle. What about the rest of the shirt?

I came on board with Lucid, and have dumped MS for ever. 10.10 seems to just like 10.04 with minor detail improvements. It has so far done everything flawlessly.

I am aware of the benefits of multiple partitions but for the sake of simplicity I originally installed on a single partition, and since then I've only ever done upgrades. It has given me no trouble and I'm not expecting any.

PARIS furnished with engorgement

You haven't looked.

I think you are guilty, perhaps, of failing to investigate the photographic (video) evidence freely available in the public domain.

PFY

Rui is not by any chance the BOFH's Pimply Faced Youth, is he?

Legendary steampunk computer 'should be built' - programmer

done

I seem to remember a certain german electrical engineer, who delivered a working (primitive) computer on a table top in 1936, using relays. His request for funding, to develop the idea, was rejected. I seem to recall it had a clock of 50 Hz, an accumulator, a couple or four 8 bit registers... I don't think it had alternating data / opcode.

It wasn't quite a von neuman machine, but it was well on the way, and the things he said in trying to 'sell' the bigger version showed he had a firm grasp on what had to be done next. It's perhaps just as well they didn't fund him.

same as now

The same will happen as happens now. The Div By Zero flag will go up. Then the OS, or from DOS days the BIOS, will terminate the app and return an error msg with a completely meaningless display and a number, and after twenty paragraphs of reading, the stupidity of what you've done will drop you like a dead fish.

US navy to battle Iranian mini-ekranoplan swarms with rayguns

yes, but...

Lots of things were tried 66 years ago that didn't work then, but might work now.

Oracle stamps authority on Java roadmap

Please please...

Cautiously in favour of that, but it will impede the adoption of the language by new users / programmers, as most of the "Hello world" stuff out there is as old as the hills. You can update the doco at the home site (indeed you must) but what about all the tutorial junk out there? It's going to make life very difficult for nubes.

Stallman storms in on Oz software patent conflab

Thanks Reg.

News to me, and I live in Brisbane. Thank you for your coverage. Nice to know that at least the register is watching out for me, even if my own media isn't.

Boffins riot as Hadron Collider upgrade is delayed

No good will come.

How did Wowbanger the Infinitely Prolonged get started again? Something about a cup of tea, pop sticks, rubber bands and boredom, wasn't it?

Douglas, Elvis doesn't really love you! Please come back and sort this lot out for us.

Wikileaks founder blasts reopening of rape probe

Doubt.

I don't know whether Julian Assange is on the level or not, but if he was, wouldn't it make sense to try and discredit him any way possible? Otoh, if he was a grubby piece of work, threatening to publish lots of classified documents seems like an odd way to defend himself and mitigate damage. If he was truly crazy, he might go that path, but I don't get the sense that he's crazy. So ... what seems to be going on?

Luke Skywalker to helm movie of own comic, Black Pearl

AArrre!

Dribble.

MS denies Win 7 backdoor rumours

Trust

Let me see, what does that mean in English? 'It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.'

"Echelon" Sorry, my bad.

I don't trust Microsoft. Microsoft have never said or done anything that I'm aware of that indicates they are worthy of trust. If you have worked on parts of Win7 then I presume you work for MS or the NSA, in which case, respectfully, I don't trust you either. I don't trust the US government, or any of the many security agencies it employs. I don't trust the Pope. I don't trust telemarketers, used car salesman, people who tell the cheque is in the mail, strange dogs or plactic shopping bags either.

This lack of credulity may mark me as an 'idiot' or a 'cretin' to you, but from my point of view - I've been around for a while and seen some things.

Whilst I have no love for Microsoft.

in response to kevin biswas,

If I were a spook tasked with delivering best intelligence to my lords and masters, and I could lean on MS with a huge antitrust case that might go away, I'd get a backdoor written that could be exploited from the network. I would NOT write a general 'retransmit everything to nsa.gov' function for exactly the reason you give. It'd be found and soon. The value in the 'feature' is not general snooping on aunties' collection of cat pictures, it's in getting a tipoff that Osama uses the 3rd box from the left at Happy Sams Internet Cafe in Mogadishu, so you can plant a keylogger or something on that specific box. For general snooping, they already have eschalon and such.

@Whilst I have no love for Microsoft. # By kevin biswas

If I was an NSA (or cia or homeland sec) spook writing a backdoor for windows, it would work something like this. I have some kind of lead from Eschalon, or similar, and I want to access [this] computer. So I send it a long password, and it activates the remote help-desk function in windows, which grants me full access to the machine. I can then watch what the user is viewing and doing, or I can operate the machine as if I were sitting at it - when nobody is watching. When I'm done, it wipes all evidence that I've been there. Unless I activate it, it sends nothing to anyone.

If the network admin happened to be investigating an existing problem, using a packet sniffer, at just the time I was doing this, I might get caught. Otherwise...

IBM lab builds computerized cat brain

"Yes but can it love?"

Who cares? Love is a very primative, low level fuction shared with most vertibrates. It feels nice, but it doesn't make us human. High level cognative processes and high level communication do that.

I think I've got a furball!! <cough, cough>

National Security Agency beefed Win 7 defenses

Your backdoor man, in black.

As a suspicious person, I've long held that MS did a deal with the US gov back in the day. I take this as confirmation. Whatever other vulnerabilities 'windows' might have, I bet you it has an 'official' back door.

LHC starts beaming Saturday: Collisions Dec 3

Ghostbuster

"don't cross the beams"

Why not, Will? You're not carrying this accellerator in a backpack.

It's true. This man has no d1ck.

Michael Jackson planned 'robot duplicate' of himself

Is there a welder in the house?

It's grabbed itself on the "whhOOOhhh!" again.

Brit space agency to probe 'crackpot' antigravity device

Bollicks.

There must be at least 5,000 ways to achieve a visual effect like that. There must be at least 50 ways to get a piece of kit to actually hover like that appears to. Have any of them proved to be of any use at all? Well, we do have mag-lev trains. Are they of any use at all? Er... Should we ignore it? No, we should not. It's like being given a lottery ticket that appears to have the winning numbers on it. It probably looks too good to be true because it is. On the other hand, wouldn't you feel a right wally if it was genuine and you sent them packing? What? Cold fusion? Yeah, I know...

Virginia corrections officers on 'dog fondling' rap

Really?

Our informant Mike Richards notes: "You know, I'm almost certain Tom Baker never said that to Leela."

Oh really? Tom would never be silly enough to film it, or do it in front of several other witnesses - I believe that - but did it happen?