Posts by Dr Trevor Marshall 91 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
Every time my Lenovo ThinkPad boots up it complains it cannot find a driver for the "PCI Simple Communication Controller." That is because that AMT driver is not on my computer. I made sure it was not. And IME is also disabled in the UEFI control panel (although I suspect there is a back door around that). So what's all this "doesn't affect consumers" thing? Is it possible to install Windows without installing drivers for the IME chip?
Or maybe they are talking about my Netbook, or Chromebook, or God knows what-all, as a "consumer device."
As well as my fibre connection I use Earthlink as a backup service. They deliver via the TimeWarner Cable connection, much cheaper rates than Time-Warner, and adequate speeds (25/25). Hopefully this deal will not raise my rates too much, as I only use the service when the fibre is down (or slow) :)
I finally tired of Lenovo ruining the keyboard and trackpoint in their latest models, and went back to a 2012 laptop (which is within 20% of today's CPU speed in any case). Now I have the orginal IBM Thinkpad keyboard again (OK, nearly original), with a UEFI BIOS that actually allows you to turn off all the (known) backdoors, and revert to "Legacy" mode. It was quite painless, really. I paid $240 for the as-new X220, added a 1Gig SSD, and it really hums... Luv it!
So long, and thanks for all the fish, Richard Sapper, you have made my life so much more enjoyable these past two decades...
Google voice sends and receives SMS just fine. It even allows you to "reply" to any SMS that have been forwarded to your Gmail account as emails, and then converts those replies to send as SMS. Very clean. Of course, this only applies to GV users who haven't converted to Hangouts, and are still on the old Obihai/GoogleChat GV connections..
I just put a Tomato-based router between the (backdoored) Verizon FIOS router and my network. Just tell Tomato to NAT one of the IP addresses out of the router. Not quite as fast as reprogramming the router as a bridge, but setup is simple and it is adequately secure...
Resume.doc.exe? No, my logs are just full of incoming Resume.doc and Resume.zip. Nothing complex, like a double extension. But I am using Eudora here. HTML is only enabled when I request it enabled -- on a message by message basis. And the ZIPs get sent to 7-Zip by default, not Windows.
In the USA I just bought a handful of spanking new T420 with Sandy Bridge and Windows 7 Pro for around $200 and a spare X220 for myself. Ebay was the place to look. The really good "manufacturer refurbished" units have largely gone now, but there are still sellers. Maybe the newer models will come out next week, but Sandy Bridge was good enough for us....
Pale Moon is an excellent 'fork' of Firefox, with a lot of esoteric stuff stripped out. Oh - and it let's you view self-signed HTTPS sites. Pale Moon seems to be run by just a handful of developers. Take a look, see what FOSS can really achieve :)
There is much better hardware available for a media center, and anybody familiar with programing a PI will be able to program them too. I just downloaded KitKat 4.4.4 for a CuBox, already rooted, and everything 'just worked'. There are no "will do it next year" items. I bought another CuBox (from NewEgg) for a Gigabit Ethernet SATA server, and from Ebay bought a 'Banana Pro', with case for an integrated SATA hard drive, for $69.
Sure, I have two PIs, but it is time to replace the server's 100Base-T and USB2 disk limitations. My PIs have done their job. There is an active ecosystem of small Linux (/Kodi/Android) systems out there now. Time to move on from our obsession with PI, IMO. Eben has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams...
and everything just worked. All my FF history files, passwords, even cookies ported over from Firefox as simple file copies. Amazing.
Pale moon doesn't abuse you if you want to accept self-signed certificates, and it doesn't have Australis stuff, and it doesn't freeze every few accesses to Google sites. Also, their ATOM based version works really well on the old XP netbooks the family still uses...
The only important plugin which didn't work is FireFTP, so I keep an old copy (v29) of FireFox around, as the new FF don't work properly with that plugin, either...
Thanks to the developers who enable all this flexibility...
" .. none of the publications made in your online journal have ever been accepted for publication in PubMed, the officially recognised database .."
Dear Don Dumb,
Actually, I have many papers in Pubmed. In prestigious journals too. One dating back to 1982, but most in the last few years. And I speak at medical conferences all over the world. So it is always a pleasure to try and start a sensible conversation at el Reg :)
We live in an era when science is only just beginning to understand the human brain, and its signalling. Some studies are starting to show an unexpected interaction between RF fields and the human body, especially the brain (which is now known to control the immune system). I would argue that it is pure science -- whether high-energy RF is still regarded as completely safe in 2020 -- which will choose 'the winner.'
http://news.osu.edu/news/2014/11/21/study-doubling-saturated-fat-in-the-diet-does-not-increase-saturated-fat-in-blood/
Interesting that this Reg article crossed my desk the same day a very interesting study result was promulgated by Ohio State University: "New research links diabetes, heart disease risk to diet high in carbs, not fat"
All this rubbish about fatty foods causing diabetes is just plain incorrect -- 20th Century rubbish. Although Medicine still tends to think in terms of simplistic cause-effect, the huge size of the human proteome, interactome and infectome make such simplistic concepts as "obesity causes diabetes" not worth the (admittedly degraded) brain cells used to keep repeating this simplistic nonsense.
Indeed, this is one time they do need to think about the children, and those sick amongst us, who will now be cooped up inside a Faraday cage with hundreds of cellphones emitting full power trying to access a working cell-site. What a human disaster in the making.. As if WiFi (at 10,000 times the required power level) was not bad enough...
Thanks for that tip. I will use IE8 when I want to use MAPS. The new interface is an abomination, and, as you say, they serve up the good ol' one for IE8. Thanks :) And no thanks to Google for second-guessing that I like their new menu-less interface. I don't. It sucks. It has made me shift to Bing Maps. But now there is a pathway back to what works so well -- thanks Google :)
There are a number of Eastern European medical devices in the WiGig frequency range which use nanowatts of power to affect the nerves and brain. They mostly evolved from USSR research. We may have gotten away with Wifi so far, no real evidence of negative interactions with human beings (so far), but IMO there is a disaster looming at WiGig frequencies and powers. So, as you say, "cross fingers."
Terabyte Unlimited's "Image for Windows" also works with Linux. Boots from HiRen's recovery USB or floppy, or CD. Creates an image file(s) which can be booted. Best for System disks/partitions but will do a complete drive, if you wish.
I have never needed any other solution. I run an automatic backup every night with it. Saved my bacon several times.
Also good for porting operating systems intact to a new hard disk.
At least that was what I found. After the live broadcast had ended everybody would have been watching the same recording.
So was the 'fault' in YouTube, in the way Slooh set up the live broadcast (there are user configuration toggles in the interface), or in Flash player??
@Andrew Jones 2
I am running 2.3.6. on a Galaxy Note N7000 with all the Samsung and Google bloat removed (including Maps) and, while the phone is sitting on the shelf updating emails (K9) over WiFi and monitoring Google Voice (GrooveIP) it uses 10% of its battery a day. So there is nothing magical about the new OS releases. Except that the old releases don't get vulnerabilities patched (by Google).
However, one reason I stay with 2.3.6 is that Google has been progressively locking all users into its ecosystem with each release, I don't want to be locked into any Google ecosystem, Sorry. I value my privacy. And I prefer the older, menu-configurable systems, not the new UI. Sorry. That's just me. I have been in computer programming too long, I guess...
Thanks for this perspective, Andrew. I haven't had time to read the actual ruling, and your summary was very useful. The real problem is that most US consumers only have one broadband provider. This allows a company like Verizon to offer me 15/5 FIOS internet, their lowest speed, for only $74.95 (base) per month. I can get a discount to $49.95 the first year, but then my bill automatically changes to $74.95 plus router, plus taxes and fees. An ADSL feed required me to maintain a dry-line phone number, which was $65 per month with ISP costs on top of that. Some consumers have cable, where it is possible to keep the bill around $50 per month, provided one has some negotiating skills and doesn't mind a low 3/1 data rate.
Despite paying Verizon the $80 monthly fees, if I try to stream a 1080p YouTube video I find the data rate roughly half that of the 720p version (my router logs connection speed). Is it throttling? Yes, most likely, as no similar effect can be noticed on my cable modem feed from a different ISP. So throttling is a public issue, even now... for me, at least...
Verizon USA FIOS routers have a backdoor for tech support, which is well-documented. But recently, when I logged into my Verizon web account to check my billing balance, I saw that my WIFI WPA2 password was recorded there in plain text, I switched ISP. It is just unbelievable how any ISP could surreptitiously harvest my WiFi password into their database. To say nothing of the threat to my WiFi network, knowing my WPA2 password would make social engineering of my internal network passwords much, much, easier.
And yes, I know Google does it with Android devices. I have given those devices their own DMZ.
No surprise why it is getting the sales increase. Guess what ACER and ASUS were trying to foist upon the end user :)
Oh - and the Lenovo BIOS also supports Win XP and Linux Drivers. UEFI can be bypassed, although it is uncertain whether selecting legacy Bios disables rootkit pathways in UEFI :)
Whether in Brussels or Beijing, I always prefer tethered 3G to WiFi. If I use WiFi, it is behind a VPN (usually my own server).
As for giving " name, address, workplace, ID number, birth date and phone number just to register for Wi-Fi" -- who would be silly enough to do that in this day and age? Birth date?
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