Posts by Franklin

Rogue ActiveX controls menace users

Trusted ActiveX controls?

"Trusted"? You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means.

'Fiendish' Trojan pickpockets eBay users

@nickj

"It's no good for computer fanboys to hide behind the "user is a wanker" shield; like or not, t'interent is a consumer appliance. If I buy a microwave oven I have a reasonable expectation that it won't cook my gonads while I'm waiting for it to cook my tea."

The problem is not the technology; con men have preyed on the credulous for as long as we've been recognizably human. The technology merely makes the credulous easier to exploit, that's all.

The basic problem here has absolutely nothing to do with computers, and everything to do with the fact that we have a large population of people who believe anything they read without question. "Oh, this executable file will show me pictures of a car I want to buy? This other executable file is from Microsoft and if I run it, I'll make my computer safer? Okay!"

And credulity *is* a social problem, not a technical problem. The woman lost nearly nine grand because she has been brought up to believe that she can trust the things that she reads. That's a problem that no technological measures can solve.

No, the real moral of the story is...

...never run an executable that you receive in an email.

Even if it seems like it comes from someone you're bargaining with on eBay. Even if Norton says it's okay.

NEVER. RUN. AN EXEUTABLE. YOU. RECEIVE. IN. AN. EMAIL.

Viewpics.exe? C'mon. I don't need to know who it was from or what the email said it was in order to know that's a virus.

NEVER.

RUN.

AN.

EXECUTABLE.

YOU.

RECEIVE.

IN.

AN.

EMAIL.

***EVER***!

While I realize that computer users tend to be naive and credulous, and the real bastards ere are the virus writers, at the same time it's very difficult for me to feel sympathy for a person who runs a file attachment received in an email and becomes infected, regardless of what that person loses as a result.

Thai police nab manhunt suspect

Just unscrambled the pic myself

I downloaded and played with the image in Photoshop, just to see whether or not the descrambling was all tht difficult. I suspected it would be; my first suspicion was that the perpetrator, knowing he was creating photographic evidence of crimes, would at the very least use multiple passes of the filters he used to obscre his face, possibly with different selections or at different levels.

As it turns out, he didn't.

Anyone with Photoshop can do this, though getting results as good as Interpol's takes some precise work and jiggery. Still, in about five minutes (and working from the image posted on El Reg), I was able to get results almost as good as Interpol's.

If anyone cares about the technical details, he used the built-in Photoshop "Twirl" filter. You can undo it yourself in Photoshop. First, make a selection of the distorted part of the image. Use the oval marquee tool; I found it easiest to start from the center part of the twirl (the center of the eye) and expand the marquee outward rather than trying to freehand the selection. Bring the marquee right out to the outer edge of the distortion effect; I used the point at which the horizontal gold stripe of the wall pattern behind him begins to distort. The affected area is almost, but not quite, a perfect circle.

Then run the Twirl filter. Start with a setting of -999 degrees; he ran it originally at maximum effect. If you see asymmetric distortion of his face, your selection wasn't quite right; rejigger your selection a little bit, rinse, and repeat. You'll know you got your selection right on the money when his face magically appears out of the swirl.

Hitachi halves hard drive head size

Forget new drive head technologies...

...we need to get rid of hard drives altogether.

I mean, c'mon. You open up the case of an ordinary desktop computer, and what do you see inside? Miracles of solid-state electronics, with circuits etched into silicon so small that quantum effects become a real engineering headache for the folks who design them...and then this big, whirring, spinning piece of antique Victorian clockwork.

It's appalling and embarrassing, really. Spinning disks of magnetic media? We need to chuck the clockwork already and move on to solid-state mass storage.

Mammoth wool gives up genetic secrets

Hold the T-bones...

...they ain't coming back just yet. If the researchers were only able to extract mitochondrial DNA, nobody's going to be cooking up any wolly mammoths.

Mitochondrial DNA is DNA found within (daha!0 the mitochondria, the cellular powerhouses inside modern cells that were once, eons ago, free-living organisms. This DNA is entirely separate from the DNA inside cellular nuclei that makes us hairless and mammoths wooly. Mitochondrial DNA is useless for making anything except mitochondria, which aren't even complete cells.

Sony bundles rootkit-like software on USB drive

Suppose you were an idiot...

...and suppose you were management at Sony. But I repeat myself.

Teen sticks Xbox 360 power supply in bowl of water

Well, if you REALLY want to get technical...

...water DOESN'T conduct electricity. Pure water is actually a pretty good insulator. It's actually the stuff dissolved in the water that conducts electricity; purified, distilled water won't.

And when it comes to voltage...hell, there are sex toys that generate tens of thousands of volts, but such negligible current that they do little more than tingle. Violet wands, they're called.

'Law and Order' cop accused of child porn possession

Re: Computer forensics

"The police will undertake a full forensic examination of the hard drive. This should be able to establish when and how the images came to be on the computer."

Mmm-hmm. Of course they will. A full forensic examination, you say? Well, if their forensic examination is as detailed and as meticulous as it was in the case of Julie Amero, the substitute teacher who was accused and convicted when her school's virus-ridden Win98 box started showing porn pop-ups, then he's well and truly buggered.

A full forensic examination. The police, in the US, will conduct a full forensic examination. Of a computer. Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I feel safer already!

Do the words "chain of custody" mean anything?

Bob brings his computer to Dave the computer tech. Dave takes the computer to Officer Bill and says "Oh, look, Officer Bill, this computer has teh kiddie pr0nz on it!" Officer Bill arrests Bob. Has it occurred to anyone that even if Bob keeps his computer under lock and key at all times, and allows nobody else near it, the mere fact that Dave the computer tech has had unrestricted access to it and Dave the computer tech is not a law enforcement officer itself completely destroy the legal chain of custody? There is no way to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Bob put the images on there, and it wasn't Dave the computer tech's attempt to exploit the current wave of moral hysteria to set Bob up for reasons real or imagined, after all...

AllofMP3.com owner faces jail time

At least the RIAA and music fans agree on one thing...

It's nice to see that among the squabbling over copyright, monopolization, DRM, and music distribution, fans of music and the RIAA can come together on one point:

Neither the fans nor the RIAA believe that artists should get any money.

The recording industry pays artists--you know, the people who actually MAKE the music--almost nothing for their time, effort, and creativity.

The fans, in complete agreement on principle with the RIAA, go one step further. They bootleg music on P2P networks or give their money to Russian outfits, and give NO money to the artists. Clearly, the music fans believe the recording labels don't go far enough; how else to explain music fans' emotional insistence on their God-given right to not pay the artists they love a single red cent?

MySpace erases 29,000 sex offenders

You'll change your tune when you find out what it takes...

...to become a "registered sex offender."

People have the quaint, misguided notion that "registered sex offender" = "baby-raping p(a)edophile." This is the image that law enforcement and legislators want people to believe, because it creates an awesome tool for hysteria and fearmongering--"You have FIFTEEN SEX OFFENDERS living in YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!! Only CONGRESSMAN BOB can PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN! Vote for CONGRESSMAN BOB!"

In reality, sexual predators are rare, even on the sex offender lists. Most people who are registered sex offenders have never attacked or harmed anyone and have been convicted of nonsense "crimes" like having sex in the wrong position or in the wrong orifice (in many US states, sex offender databases are litetered with people "convicted" of consensual sex acts with other adults), or simply people who go ton the wrong side of some law enforcement officer.

Here's a good one for you: In Florida, exposing one's genitals in proximity to a child is a "sex crime." So the father driving home on the interstate late at night who stops to take a leak on the side of the road while his kid is asleep in the passenger's seat is now a "registered sex offender."

You Brits have a great word for this kind of nonsense: bullocks. "Protect the children?" Sheesh. How naive do you have to be to believe that rubbish?

Google in crusade against neckties

If two contractors come to MY shop to bid a job...

...the one who has the higher price or the lower quality is already at a disadvantage. I've run businesses for years, and the one thing that I've learned is that when it comes to vendors, it doesn't matter squat what they look like. The beginning, middle, and end of what matters is how well they do the job.

Any moron can put on a suit. Not any moron can do the job well.

Second Life gets its first copyright law suit

Nothing unusual about this lawsuit at all

It's a clear case of copyright violation.

Objects in Second Life are actually computer programs, though not computer programs of a conventional sort. Computer programs, as well as computer pictures and other creative works created in or stored in a computer, are covered by copyright law, just like any other creative works.

There's nothing particularly unusual here save for the fact that it takes place in Second Life, that media darling. If one person had written a word processor and someone else was selling illegal copies of it, this would be a simple case of copyright violation and nobody other than those directly involved would give it a second glance. It's only because the program in question is a bed rather than a word processor and the copyright violation takes place in Second Life rather than on a Web site or P2P file-sharing service that it's even noteworthy at all.

Bottom line: The bed is a copyrighted work covered by copyright law. The person who copied this copyrighted work broke the law. Pretty simple, really. (And contrary to common misperception, it IS NOT necessary to register a copyright for a work to be protected by copyright law. Nor is it necessary that the violator profit from the violation in order for copyright violation to be illegal. I do so wish people would do a Google search before posting on subjects they don't understand.)

Russian copyright wars to continue despite AllofMP3 shutdown

I love the logic

I've always enjoyed the reasoning of people who support allofmp3.com and other illegal music-sharing sites and networks. "The RIAA is bad; therefore, it's OK to steal." "The RIAA gives very little money to artists; therefore, it's OK to give no money to artists." The logic behind an argument which says the RIAA is bad because it cheats artists and does not provide them with very much money, so it is therefore acceptable to cheat artists and give them no money at all, frankly boggles me.

It's wrong to deprive artists of royalties for their work. It's wrong when the RIAA does it, and it's wrong when allofmp3 does it. The people who claim justification of music theft on account of the fact that the RIAA is a bunch of thieving, greedy bastards--which, to be fair, they are--somehow conveniently fail to apply the same moral standards to themselves.

Cyber crooks hijack 10,000 websites

The Vast Anti-Virus Conspiracy

"Not me. Many years ago I used to think this about anti-virus software, but malware is different because there's a huge amount of money to be made by the criminal elements (via botnet extortion, password logging etc..)"

Same is true of viruses. Viruses, like malware, are written for profit, often by Eastern European organized crime. Viruses install remote command-and-control or mail-server software (or both) onto infected PCs; lists of infected PCs are then sold to spammers, or to people who use them to create "botnets" for extortion or DDoS rackets.

The antivirus companies don't NEED to invent fictitious threats for their software to circumvent.

Macs are more secure: official

There's no end to the smugness here.

Those bastards! Advertising things like this Why, the next thing you know, the smug gits over at Ferrari will start advertising that their cars go faster than a Chevy. Can you believe that unmitigated arrogance? Clearly, it's nothing more than a self-satisfied plot to make Chevy owners...err, Windows users feel bad about themselves.

Toyota Prius is not so green, says ads watchdog

More green than you might think, actually...

The Prius doesn't use lead-acid batteries; it uses NiMH batteries. At the moment, many critics complain, these batteries are environmentally destructive; the manufacturing process is quite dirty.

However, conventional lead-acid batteries have a very high recycle rate (well over 90% in the US); they're just plain too valuable not to reuse. NiMH batteries are almost certainly heading in the same direction--there's no well-established recycling infrastructure yet because the Prius is new enough that very few of them have been junked, but you can bet that when they start reaching the end of their lives, that the infrastructure will be there. NiMH batteries are just plain too valuable and too easy to recycle to let 'em go into a landfill.

First-gen tech is always more about promise and potential than about execution. Current hybrid cars are first-gen tech. Dismissing them now is a bit like saying data processing is a fad that won't last out the year back in 1957.

MySpace to turn over sex-offender data after all

"Sex offender" != "pedophile"

Just ask Michael Diana, a Sarasota native (now living in New York) convicted of producing and distributing obscene material--which makes him a registered sex offender--for drawing a series of comics that were scathing critiques of the Catholic Church and its mishandling of sexually abusive priests. He was the first cartoonist ever convicted of a crime in the United States for the content of a cartoon. He's a registered sex offender; better not let him near MySpace! The subjects of the cartoons, the priests who actually abused and raped children, were never arrested or charged; they can use MySpace with impunity.

Police raid ends allofmp3.com vouchers

Yes, it's true the pigopolists suck...

...and yes, its true that the success of AllOfMP3.com proves that the arguments that online music can not be sold without DRM is ridiculous nonsense.

Yes, it is also true that the recording labels treat artists very poorly, that the entirety of the record distribution business is essentially the world's biggest scam, and that the artists and consumers both have been and are being royally screwed. The entire industry is a shambles, the record label executives are as greedy as they are immoral, and we all lose.

None of that makes it OK to give money to Russian organized crime.

Buying music from Russian organized crime does not help the artists. Buying music from Russian organized crime does not change the ruthless, reckless immorality of the music labels. The fact that the labels are wrong does not justify allowing Russian criminals to pirate music.

Fraudsters feast on credit card scam

How hard is it for a Web site to display a padlock GIF?

Trivial. But that is not what we're talking about.

A padlock in the body of a Web site means nothing. A padlock on the outside frame of the window means the Web site is secured with an SSL certificate. A Web master can't draw a GIF picture of a padlock on the outside frame of the window.

Of course, having a security certificate means nothing if the site itself is untrustworthy. But anyone anywhere who submits a credit card number to a site WITHOUT a security certificate is foolish in the extreme. Entering a credit card number on a Web site not displaying a symbol showing a secure connection is just begging to have your credit card information stolen. It's mind-boggling how many people don't know that one simple thing.