Posts by jamesb2147

Did last night's US presidential debate Wi-Fi rip-off break the law?

Re: but there is also the stadium effect?

There are a couple of ways to approach this, and I've witnessed one firsthand:

1) The stadium approach.

Yes, there are loads of people. So, they use specialized, directional antennas, crank down the power, and place shielding behind and around them to limit the signal. Works for the superbowl, generally held at only the largest of stadiums!

2) The conference approach

This is the one I've seen first hand. Xirrus makes a line of AP's that effecitvely have like 16 radios and antennas set up in just the way described above; they are arranged in a circle, are highly directional, and have shielding to prevent leakage. NANOG uses them to handle their summer keynotes with generally 1000+ attendees in a room. I think they usually have 4 of these in the room. Naturally, these are fairly bandwidth hungry users, as they're all net admins/architects/operators/engineers with generally multiple devices on at once. It's quite a feat to have witnessed.

For a venue such as Hofstra, approach 2 would probably have been best considering the likely limited skills/tooling of the tech on hand, though I'm sure the bleachers would have made things difficult either way. I'm kind of surprised they didn't just ask a vendor to come in and essentially advertise their gear by operating the wireless just for this event.

Re: Hofstra University

@Alistair - "intentionally block or disrupt personal Wi-Fi hot spots"

Hofstra did absolutely nothing to the hotspots, which is exactly the limit of the FCC's authority on this matter. There's nothing to enforce unless they used a jammer, deauth packets, or some other technical means to *interfere* with the wireless devices. Interfering with the persons using such devices is 100% within their rights.

Interestingly, I worked at a private university until recently-ish. I was *the* network admin for 2500 users. I can almost guarantee that they're terribly underfunded and this was somebody's desperate attempt to look like they're bringing the university money and that IT is not just a cost center. Which is a sad state of affairs, really. They clearly also did not test their wireless before letting the crowd have at it. I've been in this position (my boss attempted the cash-in part, and thankfully, that idea was nixed, but we still made wireless promises that we could not keep and were not given tools or wireless units or time to improve coverage... it was just expected to work perfectly everywhere, all the time, magically, because that's how wireless works), so I can empathize. Still, there's a bag of at least 3 dickheads in all this. I hope they at least use the money to better their wireless infrastructure, but I know they won't.

I genuinely hope the organizers choose a better forum for the event 4 years from now, and that they don't have to include "WiFi clauses" in their contracts because of this dickbag.

Re: Like to see them try...

The requirement for a warrant applies only to the government.

If you go to your neighbor's house, they most certainly have a right to kick you out, even if it's for the wrong reason. If they call the cops, you can protest against a police search. You still can't come back to their house unless they want you there.

If you believe that your neighbor has done you harm by kicking you out of their house, you can take them to court. They'll win, of course, but you do have that whole "due process" thing still. You'll get a fair trial before you lose.

Grandstanding and fear mongering

The FCC's authority over WiFi comes from the airwaves, which are a public resource/commons. They have no authority over private agreements.

The *ONLY* reason Marriott was made to pay a fine was that its particular method of stopping people from using hotspots was to spam spoofed deauth packets over the wireless. It is illegal to operate a device that interferes with other users in the 2.4/5GHz unlicensed spectrum in the United States, and the FCC is the public agency tasked with ensuring that devices and their operators comply with these rules, which are basically grounded in a combination of ancient public policy theory (unlicensed spectrum is a commons) and technical operational theory (no device should interfere with any other device's use of the spectrum, as far as that is technically possible).

Going around, passively sniffing the wireless, and asking users to leave? Not the purview of the FCC. Also note that this is a hell of a lot more work, requires training, doesn't fix poorly planned WiFi deployments, and is expensive.

Perhaps we will see venues start to adopt this. My guess is that we won't. Sending out deauth packets is a feature often included for free as a setting in a WLC. Procuring specialty equipment, training security or other enforcement personnel how to use it, staffing events to enforce the ban, and hiring lawyers to write it into the contract to cover asses appropriately are all vastly more expensive than a free feature in a WLC.

So Kieren, I hope you choke a little on your mild outrage soup. You might see this occasionally at high profile events with extremely pricey WiFi, but otherwise, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

Windows Server 2016 will cost more on big servers, but discounts can be found

Re: Wasn't it VMware

I believe that experiment lasted <2 years. They basically failed, very publicly, to make more money on existing products. And yes, they lost a LOT of business in the process. Hyper-V can probably attribute a significant proportion of its marketshare to that little stumble.

More recent movements to eliminate certain mid-tier products and push users to higher pricing tiers have probably been more effective.

Mozilla wants woeful WoSign certs off the list

Judge, jury, and eulogy

"We require that all CAs whose certificates are distributed with our software products notify us when its policies and business practices change in regards to verification procedures for issuing certificates, when the ownership control of the CA’s certificate(s) changes, or when ownership control of the CA’s operations changes."

That's a clear violation. Mozilla claims they have evidence in the public record, confirmed by a lawyer, that WoSign 100% owns StartCom and has since November 2015. Reading through the list, Mozilla has been generous in leaving their certs intact thus far.

More importantly, the lack of audit findings are damning both for WoSign and Ernst & Young (E&Y has a lot more to lose, of course).

I used StartCom about 10 years ago on my first domain. They offered free, low security SSL certs that became trusted by most browsers, eventually, with clear instructions for creation, installation, and maintenance. Essentially, they did what Let's Encrypt is trying to do now, but on a smaller, more commercial scale.

RIP StartCom. You were kind to me in a world full of pay services.

Self-driving Google car T-boned in California crash

This is a dangerous street

And apparently common testing ground for the little self-drivers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/29/alphabet_av_backs_into_bendybus_in_california/

Another accident Google's car had on El Camino Real. Of course, neither accident seems particularly attributable to the self-driving vehicle. And, as always, if they learn from this accident, it means every car will benefit from that "knowledge."

Did you know iOS 10, macOS Sierra has a problem with crappy VPNs? You do now

Really?

Who encourages this? Old tech that's still in use needs more than "an announcement from Apple" a few weeks before support is dropped! When my Cisco gear is not going to be supported anymore, I'm given literally YEARS of warning (I think 5 years is Cisco's minimum policy, but I could be wrong).

Dropping support for insecure protocols is all fine and dandy. Dropping it with weeks of notice, published on an obscure technical part of your web presence (how many clicks from Apple.com does it take to reach this notice?), with no reasonable workaround available is shameless and inappropriate.

I used to run one of these networks. We didn't specifically use PPTP on our VPN, but I could see us having made that choice at some point in the past and stuck with it to today. I sure as hell never heard anything about this, and the only thing I can say I would have done better is to have run the beta myself before its public release. I can't say for sure that I would have noticed this kind of feature breaking, however.

And that makes me think bad on Apple. Killing old tech is fine, but we plenty of time and ample warning in the IT departments that eternally understaffed.

Ted Cruz channels Senator McCarthy in wrongheaded internet power grab crusade

Appropriate response

Oh, Kieren.

The appropriate response would be to strip Cruz of his position of authority within the Senate. The rider should pass or fail on its own merits.

Cruz, lacking any merit, seems fit to be removed. I'm actually curious how a freshman Senator got to his position anyway. Is it just because Texas holds so much sway..?

Pains us to run an Apple article without the words 'fined', 'guilty' or 'on fire' in it, but here we are

Apple's history of bravery

As I've seen elsewhere, I'll repeat here:

Apple removed floppy - CD drive and USB flash drives were on deck to replace this function anyway

Apple removed laptop CD drives - We all knew this was coming and USB flash drives are there when needed

Apple removed ethernet - As a network tech, I find this personally irritating, but I do (kind of) understand why they did it, as WiFi is now ubiquitous and fast enough for the vast majority of workloads

Apple removed 1/8" stereo jack - There's nothing to replace it. There's no obvious problem this solves other than Apple engineers can't figure out how to waterproof it (Samsung and others have solved this). It IS an industry standard and has been for decades.

Legitimately, this is a sign of the decline of Apple engineering. They could have avoided this, but chose not to because it's hard. This isn't bravery, it's something else.

Got to dash out for some rubber johnnies? Amazon has a button for that

Re: Can be hacked to do more useful things

You're right on almost all points (you capture the ARP or wireless equivalent, not 'redirect to your server').

However, I'd specifically like to mention and think you'll find interesting:

According to the WSJ, Amazon is paid $15 for every Dash button sold, and 15% revenue commision... on top of the standard Amazon commission. No wonder the buttons are so cheap and the products so pricey!

Anyway, if you want to see the sauce, Google Amazon to Add Dozens of Brands to Dash Buttons, but Do Shoppers Want Them?

Privacy advocates rail against US Homeland Security's Twitter, Facebook snooping

Two concerns I've heard so far:

1) Longer processing

2) More expense

I'd say $300M for all the visitors coming to the US is high, but not so bad. I hadn't really considered all the extra man-hours, though. :X

Longer processing actually is a HUGE negative. Get more automated kiosks, CBP!

The privacy concerns are moot until CBP makes this a mandatory field or otherwise "punishes" travelers who do not fill it out.

Snowden files confirm Shadow Brokers spilled NSA's Equation Group spy tools over the web

Good ol' US of A

I honestly just hope that no one in the top brass thinks they, or anyone else in the USG, is "safe" from foreign nations.

Hell, I don't consider myself safe, and I work for a po-dunk little company.

Re: I'm not worried

No, no, you're confused! Our not-backdoor crypto keys would be TOTALLY safe. We promise! We're really good at this stuff. Trust us, because we know.

Also, we'd ONLY use our tools to hunt down terrorists... err, and drug kingpins! Probably pedophiles, too, because nobody likes them. Oh, and Hoover at the FBI's been wanting access to your email recently, but President Trump has certified that it's only for safekeeping, so we shared it with them, too. We were assured they used good security! :D

Remember, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!

Google's brand new OS could replace Android

Re: QNX?

I can't tell whether you're joking. QNX as a mobile OS died with Blackberry's smartphone ambitions and doesn't give Google the power to say We Art Better Than Thou and Smarter Than Thou 2.

To be fair, it's engineers like these that are the real engines behind OS design these days. I strongly suspect they've heard of QNX and considered it.

Mmmmmmm webOS!

Remember me? I still have major user-facing features that aren't present in a modern smartphone OS! I wish my servers were still up so I could show you what a joy it was to use the "messaging" app and switch seamlessly between SMS, AIM, GTalk, Skype...

That is all.

Ban ISPs from 'speeding up' the internet: Ex-Obama tech guru

Not much to go on here

I believe the technical phrase is "Quality of Service." Perhaps you've heard of it?

In all seriousness, the man doesn't deserve that much derision. On a clogged connection (that's a technical term; I'm a network engineer), you can effectively "speed up" certain traffic by prioritising it at the cost of other packets/streams/metaphor of choice. To the user on a clogged connection, it *will* appear as if things suddenly sped up, especially if you're talking about buffering video. And that exact scenario is exactly what network neutrality has been about since at least 2010, when "backdoor santa" dropped his steaming hot gift of network utilization graphs from the Comcrap-TATA link on NANOG's front porch and ran for it.

Perhaps that's not snarky enough for El Reg, though.

Bloke flogs $40 B&W printer on Craigslist, gets $12,000 legal bill

Thank you for a thoughtful contribution

...and not just spewing forth your emotional reaction to a sensational story.

Anyway, I'm fairly confident he'll get his one day.

I'm surprised that the local court didn't immediately toss this, just as you are. In my locality (not in Indiana, to be fair), the local court websites are extraordinarily clear that you need to have made some attempt to settle the dispute before court and have sent court documentation through registered mail to their last known address. That's just for small claims court! Evidence of delivery of that documentation is the first thing a judge asks for when beginning proceedings.

Ego and CEO are 66 per cent the same

Re: it had a female coder

I was disappointed that they didn't skewer the Valley's incredible pricing. For all the things she was mentioning, I was certain it would cost at least $50k IRL. Lost wages from previous job, back pay, blackmail money, and all over a fairly long time.

If they weren't going to name an absolutely ridiculous figure (and $20k for all that is not really enough IRL), then they shouldn't have named a figure at all. Perhaps when it hits Blu-Ray we'll all get the deleted scene explaining, humorously, how the figure was arrived at...

You won't believe this, but… nothing useful found on Farook iPhone

Funny thing about crime

"It's only the stupid people that get caught." -- Cop friend of mine.

The point I'm making is that it was worth checking because there are plenty of idiots out there, or even intelligent folk who know what they're doing but (spoiler!) make mistakes. In terms of logical argument, the fact that there's nothing on the phone changes absolutely nothing. The equation is the same. In the court of public opinion, this would have some weight... if it were reported on, if people cared, and/or if people weren't absolutely ignorant about basically everything.

People are idiots. He who commands the cognitive dissonance of the world controls it.

Microsoft drives an Edge between Adobe and the web: Flash ads blocked

Reg's a changin'

The ads, that is. For five years or so, I've used a Flash-blocking plugin in Chrome as a poor man's ad blocker. It's served me well enough. I don't actually desire to deprive my news sites of revenue, I just hate the distracting and patently ridiculous nature of autoplay ads with fucking sound (yes, I've now noticed your product, now FUCK OFF!!! -- IBM used to be great for these).

That all changed yesterday when El Reg started having HTML5 animated ads that were super annoying. I've now joined the horde of angry AdBlock+ users. Thanks, El Reg!

Waleed Aly's NBN intervention is profoundly unhelpful

I look forward to further reporting on the matter.

My bit to contribute is that fiber is vastly better for anything that requires upload capacity, whether it's Facetime or PC backups. And, if you get a fast enough connection, you should be able to run thin/zero clients at home/work with iSCSI connections over the internet, even on a rainy day.

Right now there aren't enough premises in the world for developing these platforms into consumer-facing products to be worthwhile, but if Australia had gone full FTTP perhaps things would be different. We might not know for another 10+ years.

Apple Fools: Times the House of Jobs went horribly awry

So many gaffes

Decisions, decisions... What about refusing to let developers build apps for the iPhone for the first year or two? Or that crap "music phone" from Motorola that ran "iTunes" in some f'ed up Java mobile environment? Or blatantly violating labor law in the US by masterminding an illegal conspiracy among tech companies not to poach each others' employees (it still amazes me that so many CEO's went along with this... they deserve to be in prison and the behavior needs to be discouraged)? There are many more than are listed in this article.

Call the Cable Guy: Wireless just won't cut it

Re: Wired vs wireless

Have an upvote, but I rent as well, and my landlord was A-OK with me paying for improvements to his property. In fact, he sent maintenance up to drill the holes in the wall for me as I didn't have the tools for it. I think it cost $80, mostly for the in-wall cabling.

As for devices, near everything is Cat5E or Cat6, but a few older/crappier devices (read: cheap Android phones, game consoles, etc.) are 2.4GHz only. 5GHz is decent enough everywhere in the apt that I have a broadcast 5GHz network that I tell everyone how to use, and a non-broadcast 2.4GHz network for the peons (read: the aforementioned crap equipment). I'd rate-limit them, but they're suffering enough already.

What do you guys use at home? I've got a Dell 6224 switch, Ubiquiti ERL router, and am looking to upgrade my Ubiquiti AP to something AC-capable (considering Ubiquiti and IgniteNet for that).

FWIW, I do use my laptop wirelessly unless I'm specifically going to be transferring large amounts of data. I mostly avoid even that, though, by running most such apps on servers anyway, which are naturally all hard-wired.

Re: The bottle neck is further up the chain

1) No, but many a crap device with its super crap antenna is trying to stream Netflix over the corporate WiFi. That's generally 5Mbps+ and when you get 10 on an AP, a few with tenuous connections... well, the math doesn't work out so well on an .11n network, at least.

Some old SAP systems have default kernel user accounts. Guess what happened next?

Humor and click-bait

Get better at it. It's still annoying, Ed.

Google robo-car backs into bendy-bus in California

Did anyone bother reading the linked report?

It's not clear the author did more than skim it.

There's nowhere that says the car was "backing up." The car was "moving back" into the center of the lane.

Take a look at the StreetView for this intersection, heading East on El Camino Real as described in the accident report: https://goo.gl/maps/ibea7E9dMFv

That's a wide lane, enough for two cars if they're small. The Google AV moved to the right side of the lane in anticipation of the turn and possibly to get around other traffic. This is a very common move for meatbag drivers, though certainly questionable of an AV. Said AV encounters random sandbags blocking progress. AV waits for other drivers to pass, out of caution. When the area appears clear, AV begins moving toward the center of the lane (presumably forward) at 2 MPH to get around the sandbags. Meatbag bus barrels down the road at a comparatively quick 15 MPH and does not yield to the vehicle in front of it within its lane. There is a collision and the report describes it as the Google AV making contact with the bus.

The damage to the left front wheel indicates this collision may have been moderately more severe than a "fender bender."

Let's review what we've learned from this:

Richard Chirgwin needs to read his source material before posting.

El Reg needs to do a quick fact-check based on the simple, provided source material.

There were questionable decisions on the part of both the AV (2, by my count) and the bus driver meatbag (1, but rather egregious, by my count).

This was a low-speed collision with no injuries, thank God.

Google needs more time to improve its AV fleet safety before mass adoption. I, for one, am glad we have a sensible system in place for developing and testing these technologies.

~SH

EDIT: Worth thanking El Reg and Chirgwin for providing the sauce to begin with. Without sauce, I would not have been able to fact-check his statements and enjoy my delicious Righteous sandwich.

US Congressman calls WIPO 'the FIFA of UN agencies' at hearing

Low hopes for change

In spite of US grandstanding and some fairly strong statements of "personal" belief from Britain, it is Colombia's ambassador that's penultimately responsible.

I strongly suspect the Colombian government is *thoroughly* corrupt, based on my own, admittedly limited, dealings with consulates and stories from citizens.

So, unless the UN as a whole takes up the cause and the US, Britain, et al manage to push through a resolution, I expect nothing to change. Hell, Gurry may end up with a few sexual assault charges levied against him and dismissed, if he starts feeling cocky.

Is tech monitoring software still worth talking about?

Interesting discussion of FOSS solutions

Here's my $0.02:

I wore the network and monitoring hats as part of an IT team of 15 supporting a university of 2000 students and ~500 faculty and staff. I was *the* network admin/engineer/architect.

Zabbix looked a bit strange, though I didn't invest much time in it.

Spiceworks is 80% terrible at network monitoring. Great for configuration backups on our network, though! Couldn't use it for desktops since we were mostly Macs.

Zenoss is has similar network monitoring functionality to Spiceworks but is 90% better at it. Seemed to have very limited server monitoring IIRC. We used this for a bit to monitor the network in between other solutions. Never got the trap receiver working properly.

Cacti was too limited for our needs, though good at what it did (if ugly).

MRTG was much the same as Cacti.

NAGIOS was, by all accounts, extremely powerful. Never did get it configured though as it all seemed too much of a PITA, Yes, we even tried a couple of wrappers that were supposed to address using the GUI to add monitors, etc.

Xymon was a PITA to configure and maintain though decent at what it did.

PRTG was what we eventually settled on. It was reasonably priced and did both network and server monitoring competently. There was a lot to learn but the system could be configured in a basic way with advanced configuration applied as time allowed for learning. It was not the best system available, and I wouldn't sing its praises from the hilltops, but it's probably worth checking out even if you hate proprietary solutions. It is reasonably competent, with alerts based on groups, dependency monitoring (router goes down and stop monitoring all the downstream switches and do NOT alert me again), SSL expiry monitors, frequent updates which occasionally add real features (and they fixed several SSL vulns in a matter of a few months), etc.

UC Berkeley profs blast secret IT monitoring kit on campus

Couldn't get past the paywall, but this sounds a hell of a lot like a bog standard Palo Alto firewall to me.

Don't get me wrong, people should know that their admins can see literally every site they visit, but it's par for the course in academia these days. How else is an admin supposed to keep those luddite English profs from downloading that FREE $manuscript_of_preference!?

(FWIW, I'm personally highly amused by English profs and others who will very loudly insist that "paper is better" right up until they've actually used a Kindle for travel. Srsly, luddites.)

Hyatt says hackers took card data from 250 of its hotels

Joy

is when you see your favorite hotel on that list.

Why did Hyatt have to make it a PITA to see the list of affected hotels? *sigh* Nothing really changes... ever.

Google says Project Fi wireless network now slabable

Welp, still haven't answered my question

This SIM is T-Mo only, I believe. I've not read anywhere whether it still supports the full international data network.

NBN shows strong ARPU growth as users connect

Re: 78% on FTTN, HFC, 4G speeds

In theory, sure. Let me know how that works out for you the next time it rains.

You sound a little too certain of your own convictions, and a little too interested in tooting your own horn, which in my book makes you a politician. Technical persons are generally not so interested in grand, sweeping statements that sweep important details like line quality under the rug. That's the purview of politicians leaving goose eggs for the next administration to clean up.

Also, I'm in the US, and haven't ever seen LTE top 30Mbps. Latency on wireless, even LTE, is generally in the 80ms ballpark. And as someone who uses SIP over top of his LTE connections (I've used Sprint, T-Mo, and Verizon for this), I can personally attest that this is a less than superb experience. Is the outback great for reception or something?

NOTE: I've only done this speed testing on Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and never at the same time. Most of my tests have been on Verizon, and not in super urban areas (generally cities of ~100k-250k population). I've used various devices, generally phones, to test LTE speed using the SpeedTest app from Ookla.

Now VW air-pollution cheatware 'found in Audis and Porsches'

Clean mode?

Up up down down left right left right B A Start!

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

Note on Windows 8

<rant>

I do rarely see this mentioned: If you're going to make fun of Win8/8.1, do so b/c the OS is called Windows, not "a Window at a time" or maybe "two windows at a time" or "you can run as many windows as you like as long as only one's on the screen at a time."

The OS is called Windows. It had damn well better support real window management.

</rant>

I quite like Win8 on a touchscreen tablet with removable keyboard dock! It seems like the use case the OS was designed for, to the detriment of everything else.

Sherlock

"Users keep voting with their feet on this issue. XP was simple, and a hit. Vista was confusing, and a flop. Windows 7 was simple, and a hit. iPhones are expensive, but simple, so users are willing to pay a premium. Android dominates the market for cheaper devices."

Nope.

Windows releases since XP have been more like this:

XP

Vista - Radical release (UAC EVERYTHING)

7 - Middle ground (UAC cranked way back)

8/8.1 - Radical release (TOUCH EVERYTHING)

10 - Middle ground (touchscreens are now supported as near equal citizens)

In the meantime, those radical releases often achieved a major goal for Microsoft. UAC being so persistent throughout Vista and nagging users encouraged devs to implement proper security to avoid unnecessarily causing a security prompt and annoying users. The worst programming practices were appropriately discouraged through this change. Touchscreen first interfaces in 8 meant that all future Windows laptops will be loathe not to include that feature (something even Macs lack today). Microsoft ensures their partners' fleet of hardware will be ready for the army of youngsters growing up with non-Windows touchscreen tablets today. If anything, I'd criticize Microsoft for holding back on the touch support in Windows 10, which seems to be designed more for XP-style convertibles with stylus than for today's finger touch, but I digress.

My big point is, Simon Sharwood, to not act like a holier-than-thou Pope when you're resting on an ass. Write an article about why XP's design is better (and no, your one sentence on that topic wasn't enough) instead of picking on Matias' tweets, even if he is a twat.

Full disclosure: I'm an old-skool webOS fanboi. :3

Icon relevant b/c I'm tired of seeing tech authors refer to Microsoft's "mistakes" with Vista and Win8 when those were all strategic decisions. Excepting, perhaps, for the driver crashes in Vista: Those were basically unforeseen b/c MS gave their partners access to code ~1 yr before release and the driver authors at partner companies did... not enough with that information.

For Ed.

Matias wasn't involved in PalmOS. Mr. Duarte was involved in Palm's (later HP's) webOS, a distinctly better OS. Prior to that, he worked on Helio phones, by my recollection. He actually carried over his ideas on UI/UX (I struggle to differentiate the two, even though I know it) to webOS and got to implement them from the earliest stages, which is partially how we got the "card" metaphor (later stolen by both Android and subsequently iOS). That basically means webOS was Matias' purest vision; even with Google he's had to work within the existing environment, merely making changes rather than radically redesigning the multitasking or windowing system.

...But I digress. Ed, please change PalmOS to Palm's webOS.

'Get a VPN to defeat metadata retention' is good advice. Sometimes

I'd disagree with your conclusions

People should still be advised to use a VPN, but saying "there, that fixes our shitty policy ideas!" isn't really something that is worthy of broadcasting on TV.

Average Joe: "Wait, if I can do this, can't the terrorists?!"

Accidental homicide: how VoLTE kills old style call accounting

Re: Just charge for QoS levels

The issue I can foresee here is twofold:

1) Communicating how this works to users. Talk about a nightmare.

2) Congestion is rare enough that you'd actually have to gouge users something fierce when it happens, and that's about the only time QoS matters, at least on wired networks. I suppose giving higher transmit priority to higher QoS levels would be an alternative, but current models aren't built for it.

QoS is the point here -- I have $10 tablet data plan I run my phone off of

The researchers' points were valid, El Reg is an entertainment organization because society doesn't know how to separate out information services and entertainment, and QoS will be what we probably all end up paying for because you can't fake that and it's easy enough to track.

My SIP calls are fine about 60% of the time without any QoS on my Verizon LTE connection in suburban USA. The rest of the time I have to repeat things frequently or ask the other side to repeat themselves. I'm actually thinking about getting a couple of wired SIP phones for the house and office for when I need a reliable voice connection (not as often as you'd imagine, given the prevalence of email, and I work at a University where people absolutely HATE email). I'd be willing to pay slightly more for a more reliable data connection for phone calls (read: better QoS) on a per-minute basis, but I doubt the telco business model will quite work out that way. I'm suspecting something more like $20/mo for voice-quality QoS and they'll never give up trying to keep me -- er, hackers, from abusing it and the call accounting system.

Certainly the above ideas about paying for a higher QoS on a per-unit basis interest me, though! I'd love to see a wireless ISP (see what I did there?) try that.

Re: Indeed

I have, unfortunately, seen GPRS on a smartphone. ATT's US network used to not be so great in my area. It's been years since I tried it, though.

Child abuse, drug sales, terrorism fears: Why cops halted a library's Tor relay ... for a month

I fear this has gotten out of hand

You don't live in a democracy, friends.

You live in a republic. A democratic republic, to be sure, but a republic none the less.

What the Zeus? Nexenta beats VSAN, Nutanix and SimpliVity

SDS and NexentaStor

This honestly baffles me. My employer was looking into NexentaStor solutions and after spending a few hours with the then-Nexenta CTO (who also worked for a startup vendor) working out a solution and walking us through the technical details of the product, he stumbled upon a feature that didn't occur to us as being particularly useful until he said it: we could stick our existing arrays into the NexentaStor box and manage it just like any other NexentaStor storage.

I don't know why they're so bad at advertising this. Being able to swap out the back-end storage while maintaining the software is a HUGE positive for the company and they didn't seem to realize what they were onto.

VMware SMASH! Bad ESXi 6.0 bork-bug getting 'aggressive' fix

VMware updates

I'm sure nobody has ever run into any bug with a VMware product, ever.

More seriously, the main improvement I see in VMware's version of Windows 98 is that the BSOD is now a PSOD, and there are actual log files worth looking at when it does crash (oh, so many files, to be honest).

American Airlines: TITSUP computers ground US flights

"Major Airports"

That's a bit of a misnomer.

ORD, DFW, and MIA are all AA *hubs* which is actually vastly more important than just being a "major airport." In fact, they're AA's three BIGGEST hubs!! Basically, AA has a handful of less major hubs left (if they're still operational, which I'm not confident of). Those would be places like PHX, PHL, CLT, and LAX.

Why the 'Dancing Baby' copyright case is just hi-tech victim shaming

Always appreciative of a contrarian view

I only hope most people disagree with the author's apparent view of fair use. It's an incredibly important doctrine for the creation of synthesized content, particularly when licensing is overly expensive or onerous, and it's a rare example of legislative progress in the public interest in the field of creative rights.

With that said, again, I really appreciate a well thought out contrarian viewpoint, and this is an excellent example of that.

Small note: victim shaming is a term I specifically associate with the treatment of rape victims. I don't particularly appreciate the author co-opting the term for his own ends, particularly when it's entirely apt. 'Victim shaming' seems only even somewhat appropriate to apply to the internet lynch mobs that inappropriately target rights-holders.

Attempting to bully other companies is simply par for the course behavior from machines designed specifically to extract as much money as possible from the economy, but with the rights (and anthropomorphism) of laws written to apply to people. (It's SO BAD here in the US that I'm not even sure of the appropriate term to refer to entered-the-world-through-a-vagina people.)

Fed-up sysadmins beg Microsoft to improve pisspoor Windows 10 update notes

Re: Feeling antsy

I'm no *nix blowhard, but I suspect you'll find many products to be superior for a power user.

SBS Diva strikes again!

I had no idea Susan was a reader of El Reg! Surprised you guys didn't toot on your own horn, so to speak.

West's only rare earth mine closes. Yet Chinese monopoly fears are baseless

Re: Bad luck Estonia

Here in the good ol' US of A, we commonly refer to anything "Western" (when we don't mean the Western US, of course) as anything from about Germany and westward. What we really mean is:

Anything in Europe that was West of the Iron Curtain.

The US and Canada.

Everyone else is a Savage, or, at least, not Western. Sorry, Estonian Savages and Spies.

'I don't recognise Amazon as a bullying workplace' says Bezos

I did a little research before interviewing there and it becomes really clear on Glassdoor very quickly that your experience there is "purposefully Dawinian."

It also becomes abundantly clear that your experience will be at least 50% dictated by your direct supervisor. So, a$$hole boss == crying at desk. Nice boss == competitive but interesting environment.

The guy I interviewed with turned out to be not that nice, so I ran. It was an interesting experience nonetheless and I am quite confident that a lot can be learned from working there.

Fun fact: one interviewer said he'd been there 3 yrs (he was the sole developer for one of their web products) so I joked that he must be a real veteran of the company. He immediately went to check and found he was in the 86th percentile for length of time at Amazon. Good grief, that place has turnover.