Posts by RobHib

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

@Thomas 4 -- Re: Does it actually matter?

And I've probably capitulated in the circumstances.

But if I'd have been the mule, as would anyone with any sense, I'd have isolated myself from the encryption and password process then I could genuinely claim that I wasn't lying. What's more, I could even give particulars and they'd be little the wiser and no closer to the docs.

...And why didn't he (or others) send the stuff electronically beforehand (so there was nothing to intercept)? Also, why did he go via the U.K. anyway?

Essentially, Miranda is a fool or awfully naive.

If Miranda is not a fool then perhaps we're all being fed a fairytale and actual events are quite different.

@Sir Runcible -- Re: Highly sensitive UK documents? Really?

I'd reckon Chris Miller is correct. Remember this League of Gentlemen has been swapping vigorously since at least WWII. (Governments have even said so from time to time.)

Bloody amateur

Miranda has to a bloody amateur. I'm not even in that game and I'd not do that.

Why didn't he just encrypt it first then email it to himself then collect later? Walking through customs with nothing would seem much more prudent.

China stuffs rag in mouth of biz-rumour web ring

I can remember.

"Societies around the world are struggling with questions about what's acceptable online."

I can remember pre-internet. It's now such a shemozzle I'm beginning to think the world was a better place back then. At least it was simpler.

Siri: 'STOP trying to strap me to your forehead. It won't work'

@PhilBuk - Re: Silly DARPA Man

"...but exponentials never end"

But physics does.

Exponentials and div/0 stuff are also reasons why we 'cheat' in mathematics.

You know - blah, blah: In the limit dy/dx -- > whatever!

Ex-Windows chief Sinofsky flogs brains to Valley startups

Pipe Dreaming

I was thinking, with Ballmer's exit, would it be nice if Microsoft purged itself of all this dead wood.

We might then get the products that we'd dreamed about.

...But I'm dreaming again.

Facebook strips away a bit more of your privacy – but won't say why

Re: Thank heavens my Facebook and Twitter accounts are dormant.

Oh, I forgot. No user photos with even a vague likeness to reality (pattern-matching you know). And ensure that the image is completely different from account to account.

Of course, the same care goes with content--no uniquely identifying stuff--photos etc, and avoid detail at all cost.

Best rule, avoid social media altogether.

Thank heavens my Facebook and Twitter accounts are dormant.

From time to time I've had to use social media, Facebook and Twitter etc. but my rules are:

- always use disposable accounts

- always link them to disposable email addresses

- always use aliases, ensure they're unrelated and dissimilar to your real name

- always clean your browser cache between logins (or when changing accounts)

- always change your IP address when crossing from one account to another (for those with a dynamic IP address close your ISP connection and restart with a new IP)

- never fill in the personal details

- if forced to provide details, put in bullshit

- if you have multiple interests then always use a different account for each one

- record the details of what details you fill in, insure the info is different to other accounts

- never link accounts - use a different account for different groups of friends

- ensure a different alias for each group

- if you have to ID yourself, then tell your friends of the alias that you're using via another circuit and get them to do the same.

It's times like this that I invite the security brigade who are more au fait with social media security issues than me to help me add to my checklist.

Microsoft and Google unite to sue US gov't for more transparency

For once I agree with Microsoft and Google.

Even if Snowden wasn't involved, something as big as this level of surveillance would eventually out itself.

What the US Government has done is substantially damage its own IT industry. There's much competition in IT outside the US these days and those on the outside can easily look elsewhere.

It's anyone's guess how many billions the US has lost already, and that's probably only a small fraction of what it'll eventually lose.

Are you for reel? How the Compact Cassette struck a chord for millions

@TheOtherHobbes - Re: Horrible, horrible, horrible!

Right, I've still got my Nakamichi 680 and it still works too.

P.S.: I presume the 'first' Hobbes had 'T' begin his initials. ;-)

@Slap

"And I never had a tape get chewed up, although I had one that melted after I left it on the dashboard of my car on a hot day."

Well, if you were a regular cassette user then you ought to be in the Guinness Book of Records for luck with cassettes. I'm a long-term fan of the cassette but I'd love a dollar or a quid for every one of mine that got chewed up.

@Mark Wilson - Re: best forgotten for music

I'd like to put you in a proper double blind test (in a decent acoustic studio) and see how easily you could detect a Nakamichi 680 cassette player or its kin from other top qualify sources.

Having been involved in such tests, I've seen the Golden Ear Brigade come a cropper many a time.

RCA -- For the record!

That RCA Victor promotional video, as with much of the infamous RCA Corp once headed by the infamous David Sarnoff, stinks to high heaven.

The video infers stereo is an RCA invention when it was in fact an invention of the brilliant English engineer Alan Blumlein. The Blumlein stereo pair was patented in 1931 some 27 years earlier than that promo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumlein_Pair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blumlein

Blumlein is also known for his work on TV (the EMI 405 line TV system, especially its synchronizing), RADAR and much other. Tragically, he was killed in a Halifax bomber crash in 1942 whilst testing WWII RADAR equipment.

RCA, under Sarnoff, was known for 'stealing' the work of others. When they objected it became one-man-against-Goliath-RCA legal battle and RCA screwed them into the ground.

Notable instances:

- Edwin Howard Armstrong: screwed by RCA over patents for FM broadcasting and other radio circuits. Armstrong, after years of battles with RCA over patents, eventually gave up and committed suicide in 1954 by walking out the window of a multistory building.

- Philo Taylor Farnsworth, inventor of the image dissector (a video imaging tube), similarly screwed--this time with the help of Vladimir K. Zworykin, Sarnoff's technical 'partner in crime'. (Zworykin was the so-called* inventor of the iconoscope--an early TV camera tube whose technology largely depended on the work of other inventors.) Here's a video of the dynamic duo, Sarnoff and Zworykin, again rewriting history (notice Sarnoff's cleaver wording 'America's first all-electronic television system'--of course, the credit for that belongs to Blumlein and his EMI team, the changes made by RCA were essentially to convert the British 405 line system to 525 lines--hardly an invention per se:

http://archive.org/details/StoryofT1956.

* Kálmán Tihanyi, Sanford Essig and others - see the Wiki iconoscope article.

- Even music wasn't immune from RCA's lawsuits. A tune composed in the wake of a train crash in 1903 called the 'Wreck of the Old 97' became the subject of RCA litigation. This tune turned out to be the first million-seller ever, and of course RCA was in the thick of the litigation:

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Wreck_of_the_Old_97

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3afP13L3k

Throughout his career, Sarnoff bullied inventors and others who had very limited financial resources and thus little access to expensive legal teams. He wore them down until they sold their inventions for well below market value, or gave up, or, as in Armstrong's case, committed suicide.

This ruthless practice led to RCA becoming the largest electronics company in the world, which it was until Sarnoff's death in the early 1970s, it was only after that that Philips took the crown as the largest electronics company.

By then Philips' Compact Cassette was about 10 years old.

BTW: Also, for the record and to show that I'm not totally biased, RCA did make a major contribution to electronics both through genuine RCA patents and through many innovative manufacturing techniques, for instance (to mention only a few): the vidicon photo-conductive camera tube and of course the remarkable shadow mask colour TV display tube--that altered and dominated the course of colour TV and display technology generally for the next 50 years.

Pulsars: the GPS beacons of the cosmos

@PC Paul -- Re: Duh?

Hum, I didn't see that grammatical (nor the redundant 'the') even after a second reading, amazing! It irks me there's no post posting edit feature to correct it.

Well, I'm not in disagreement with your points, but more on that in a moment. The trouble with forums is that précising, sweeping statements and over-generalisations are the order of the day. Some weeks back I made a quite detailed post to which there seemed to be little disagreement (all thumbs up) but the immediate following post was, quoting verbatim:

"Summarize man. Summarize."

To which there were 5 thumbs up and one down (and that wasn't me). One's damned either way.

In my defence, I made the point about Voyager and the 'edge' of solar system because it's current and topical, it was not intended to be precise physics. Even if the solar system has a very sharp edge on a solar scale, it's still going to span a long way in human terms—a damn side larger than a few metres I'd suggest. In one sense that was the point I was making, but also I was suggesting that such extraordinary precision wasn't feasible, certainly not in any practical sense. You'll also note that I did put 'edge' in quotes because the concept was, for all practical considerations, hypothetical.

You'll also note that I was affronted by the extraordinary and unqualified statement from which I quoted, this I amplified upon in my reply to asdf.

Back to your point about the centre of mass of the solar system and the centre of rotation. In principle, I'd have to agree with this, but I come back to why I initially made the post which is the incredible ramifications of determining the centre of mass of the solar system to within a metre or so. Frankly, Dr Hobbs shouldn't be allowed to make such a sweeping statement without substantial qualification. Such an extraordinary statement requires an extraordinary explanation.

In essence, Dr Hobbs statement brings more the engineer out in me than scientist. Not only is there the practical problem of measurement, which is well outside the scope and precision of any human endeavour to date, but also at such huge precision the question of whether our current understanding of the laws of physics is sufficient to make a reasonable / sensible calculation of such precision. (That's assuming we could actually measure the centre of mass to within an 'accuracy' of a metre.)

Whilst we may think we've measured the centre of mass with such accuracy it may not be the case as our mathematical analogue of nature may be sufficiently imprecise as to make the measurement essentially useless. For starters, at extreme precision over many magnitudes, actual relativity in nature may not behave exactly as the mathematical analogue predicts, simply: relativity may be non-linear at the extremities. (This matter is still open to experimentation and debate, as with all aspects of relativity.)

Remember, physics is accursed with that damn mathematical concept called zero, it mucks up the Big Bang, Black holes, and quantum equations. In fact, New Scientist, last week (17 August '13, No. 2930) had an article on the divide-by-zero problem titled 'The infinity illusion', p32:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.700-infinitys-end-time-to-ditch-the-neverending-story.html

However, for the moment let's assume relativity is precisely as the equations show it to be, then we're back again to the problem of measurement. As I see it, we've serious problems in determining an instantaneous result for the centre of mass, as the solar system is a big place and relativistic effects would matter at such precision—determining the integrand so to speak would seem very problematic. Moreover, calculating the centre of mass to such precision over time would also be problematic as the solar system is full of dynamic components, thus the centre would wobble and appear fuzzy. This, in turn, would be exacerbated by the fact that the solar system itself is being acted upon by our galaxy's components as it travels through space.

I don't claim to know the extent of these effects but I'll need a damn good argument to convince me that 'within a metre or so' has any practical meaning outside the hypothetical.

@asdf - Re: Duh?

It's the sheer matter of fact way that quote was made, no qualifier, no supporting argument etc.

Given the huge magnitudes of accuracy involved, not to mention how it would be achieved, the statement affronts my sensibilities in the same way a mathematician is affronted by a maths statement without proof.

I can't recall ever having seen a statement like that before (in such a context that is).

Duh?

“we need to know the centre of mass of the solar system to within a metre or so … "

Right!! ...And I need to know the dimensions of my house to an accuracy of 10^-18 cm or so--give or take a proton width or two.

Would someone please explain to me how this would be achievable even with these precise time standards. May I also suggest we don't even know how big the the solar system is for that accuracy. For instance, in the last year or two there's been some debate whether Voyager has actually past the 'edge' of the solar system into interstellar space or not.

Hey, Bill Gates! We've found 14 IT HOTSHOTS to be the next Steve Ballmer

Someone with customer focus

Perhaps someone who gives the customer what he/she wants.

Such as different versions of Windows for differing classes of users. Microsoft's been in the Henry Ford business of offering 'any colour you like so long as its black' for too long. Now's the opportunity to escape.

Women in IT: ‘If you want to be taken seriously, dress like a man’

@Ted Treen - Re: Its not just you..

"I still come across youngsters (<30) who seem amazed that a doddery old fossil like me can actually work a computer"

I know 'em!

I've also a background in electronics, whereas most IT types have only a superficial knowledge. One waits an opportunity to solve an electronic problem--especially where's there's an analog explanation, i.e.: (Np/Ns)^2 or f=1/(2 pi LC)^1/2 or a myriad of others and watch 'em just go to water. If done with care and not overplayed, surprising how respect develops.

Obama prepares to crawl up NSA's ass with microscope

@Don Jefe - Re: It'll be business as usual

You're correct of course.

What I'm concerned about, and I suspect it's so for most of us, is not that we're doing anything wrong but the fact that we're being watched--that we're under the constant threat of surveillance.

Let me give a few examples: most people when they go to the toilet do so in private: they don't want others staring at them even though the whole world partakes in the practice. Here's a few more: it's not only humans, we once had a timid cat that used to stop eating completely when I stared at it no matter how hungry it was (I used to be nagged at for teasing it and told to stop).

Last one: Google and other search engines have lowered my dependence on physical book libraries but the cost is that I now expect to be watched and my searches recorded, by Google and perhaps even NSA, GCHQ or whoever, albeit that my searches are boring and innocuous. That's very different to the traditional library where I could go and peruse any book on the shelves about any subject and no one would have a clue what I was looking at--nor would anyone have cared a damn, my library searches were essentially private and the look-up metadata vaporised the moment I put the book back on the shelf.

Being a techie with wide interests, I can search for all sorts of diverse and way-out info. That said, I'm always mindful of what I plug into search engines and just very occasionally I find myself aborting the search where the specifics of the search are too technical and too close to subjects that flag attention.

That I, as with many others these these days, find that I am self-censoring my searches truly pisses me off.

Every time I think about it I'm reminded that the terrorists have actually won. We're now a surveillance state of which Orwell would be 'proud'.

It'll be business as usual

"how the US "can employ its technical collection capabilities in a way that optimally protects our national security"

This exercise will only placate US citizens. By US law, it doesn't and won't apply to the rest of the world. Spin-doctor and PR-Agency tactics will be employed overtime to settle down the rest of us, but you'd have to be a damn idiot to not assume that it'll be business as usual.

Do not adjust your eyes: This Kobo ten-incher has a 2560 x 1600 resolution

2560 x 1600 - About Time.

2560 x 1600 -- About time.

When that's doubled again we'll be able to kick much font hinting stuff and those nasty cheating fudges such as Clear Type.

Right, when we eventually double 2560x1600 to 5120x3200 then computing displays will have nearly caught up to the resolution Gutenberg, Garamond, Plantin and Moretus et al easily achieved in the 15th Century!

Snowden is great news for hybrid cloud says VMware

In the same vein.

It's occurred to me it'd be possible to have a virtual internet--one where physical (real) IP addresses were always obfuscated (decoupled) from net users by an encrypted layer.

It seems to me the net can never be totally secure until both users and servers are working in (interfaced to) a virtual world. That's to say servers would never be able to locate the physical location [real IP addres] of a user nor a user locate the physical location of his data server--both would only ever see virtual addresses.

Unless the encryption is broken snoops would never know the physical location of either a user or the server(s) he was using. In such a schema the servers would also be encrypted so if accidentally found there'd be no return address to source the key.

We had the inklings of such a scheme in the old WWII days when radio was the primary means of transmitting encrypted messages. In a radio comms circuit, especially one working over very long distances, an interceptor could only vaguely guess the location of the transmitter (poor direction finding meant he could be hundreds of miles off course). And those who were only ever receiving information could never be detected by the interceptor just sniffing the aether [the equivalent of intercepting IP packets]. Receivers would only be detected if their receiving requirement leaked RF (which sometimes happened but it shouldn't) or if someone discovered the location of those doing the receiving by accident.

It seems to me we should reevaluate the internet from basics if we want to truly keep snoops away. Being snoop-proof must, a priori, be fundamental to the design.

Silicon daddy: Moore's Law about to be repealed, but don't blame physics

Never been physics.

Moore's Law has never been physics. It's only ever been a measure of technological development.

Surely, no one's ever thought otherwise.

Boffins lay bare exotic Lara Croft meteorite element ununpentium

Re: RussAmericonium perhaps?

"next Island of Stability" Next? Where? Unless you mean H, He and up.

Damn long steps too, it's ~50 years since such stability was first predicted and the prediction isn't an iota better.

RussAmericonium perhaps?

So what will this eventually be? RussAmericonium perhaps?

With valuable research dollars at a premium, seems to me that unless someone can predict with at least some degree of certainty that Islands of Stability actually do exist in these never-never regions then it's a bit of a waste of time.

Elements that don't exist long enough to even determine their chemical properties aren't really much practical use of (except to those with excessively large research budgets).

Boffins force Skype to look you in the eye

Re: First audio, then video

"Not good enough. I want a full telepresence robot with Oculus Rift interface."

That's why I have opaque adhesive tape stuck over the lens on my laptop.

Frankly, there's not much that's more annoying than this inane automatic tracking stuff. If I'm forced to use video on Skype then off goes auto-tracking and I use an external camera that I can point anywhere.

Auto-tracking may be useful in certain surveillance environments but I'm damned if I want it on IM.

Supercomputer hacker coughs to flogging DoE logins to FBI agent

Definition!

That defines what stupidity is.

Good Tech: Windows is as secure as a rooted Android mobe

Well, my mobe is pretty secure.

I had the the internet disconnected at the telco.

Now, it's only a phone.

Do you think spinning rust eats flash's dust? Join the hard drive daddies club

@ChrisBedford - Re: Actually, Hard Disks are reliably unreliable!

"...to make their kit ever cheaper...reliability is the first expected casualty."

Thanks. I strongly resisted using SSDs until recently because years ago I attended lectures by an Intel engineer on how charge was stored in such devices and it's quite frightening really, that they work at all is a sort of engineering miracle. Briefly, he produced engineering info to show how the charge deteriorates when say a "1" is put into the matrix and a "0" put next to it. His overly simplified but good analogy was to consider a naughts & crosses matrix with the "1" in the middle and a "0" on an outer square and that it is made of marshmallow. As you press your finger down into the outer square to represent the "0" you will see the "1" square also deforming downward. Now consider substrate fatigue with repeated operations and it's easy to imagine why SSDs have a finite and definable life.

Nevertheless, modern SSDs, are turning out to be more reliable than HDs, thus the only things saving HDs are their large capacity and price and those margins are narrowing. Here, we put SSDs in all places where their capacity is not a limitation--HDs are only used for large archives.

Clearly, manufacturers have to make drives cheaper but they are already cheap compared with some years ago. I recall having paid nearly $2000 for a 100MB drive not that long ago--that's about 20 times as much for a piddling capacity by today's standards. It seems to me that we've gone too far when the average HD cannot be relied on to operate for more than a couple of years.

Still, SSDs aren't a long term solution either. The startling facts are that we've no really long term high capacity storage. Paper records and photography can last hundreds of years but DVDs, HDs etc. only have a tiny fraction of that life. Only a month ago I played--or tried to play--a DVD that I purchased some 5 years ago but it would not. Upon inspection, it was deteriorating: in places the 'silvered' surface had become translucent.

Long term data storage is now a very significant problem awaiting a solid technological fix. In the meantime, HD manufacturers aren't helping one iota and they'll only fix the problem when we customers start walking elsewhere. SSDs are a convenient temporary measure--not to mention a good weapon to threaten drive manufactures with, and they're well aware of that threat.

Actually, Hard Disks are reliably unreliable!

I agree with Gene Cash, HDs regularly die without warning. I've many boat anchors around me--boxes of dead HDs, mainly Seagate but with a sprinkling of WD and Samsung thrown for good measure as I've already said in an earlier post a week or so ago. These masses of dead drives have caused us considerable angst not to mention hundreds of hours rescuing data despite having a reasonable backup regime. (We've even had new HDs fail when in the process of storing rescued data from failed drives.)

Simply, the facts are that these hard disk manufacturers are making product that is reliably unreliable and they deserve to go broke unless HD reliability is urgently and dramatically improved! They're making drives at the limit of technology and they're doing so whilst cost-cutting in the extreme. It's pointless having $0.50/GB cost if the data frequently vanishes off the platter into the aether without warning.

Anyone who knows the vaguest about the operation of HDs knows that these manufacturers are already pushing the HD design envelope into unreliability. Raw data coming off HDs is already below the noise and has been so for quite some time, and if it weren't for very efficient data separators and error correction these HDs wouldn't have a hope in Hades of ever working let alone make it out of the factory. Essentially, the data density on large terabyte HDs is so high that what is recorded is hardly recorded at all.

One of the consequences is that even when HDs are used as non-operating backups they'll often fail in storage. It's a risky business keeping a drive containing a million or so files stored for a year or two, it's far from a certainty that you'll get the data back after this time. This means that users have to employ more redundancy by using more B/U drives--the drive price war is really a false economy, users end up eventually paying the equivalent of much better manufactured drives but with a lot less convenience.

If drive manufacturers are to wean many of us off SSDs back to HDs then they'd better stop the bullshit about MTBFs of millions of hours--which most know is utter crap--and genuinely make their drives more reliable.

Here's a few suggestions:

1. Make the essentially useless S.M.A.R.T. reporting system actually work by being effective and meaningful.

2. Build beepers and indicators into HDs that scream out audible warnings and flashing lights at the first sign of trouble, these failure indicators would work independently of any computer--just power-on would be enough.

3. Build in redundancy--a complete and independent second head assembly with its own separate head amp electronics and such (in normal operation this could be used to increase drive throughput).

4. Provide a rescue/data recovery mode--drive goes into slow speed mode where heads are lowered very close to or onto the surface for a once-only recovery pass.

5. Provide standardised outputs between the HDs PWA/electronics and the drive chamber electronics--when the drive electronics fails then it's easily replaced or the chamber can be easily coupled to external recovery electronics.

6. Stop the ridiculous secrecy surrounding the operation of HDs which stops people rescuing their data from failed drives. Tell users about the internal drive protocols and how the manufacturing test jig connections work etc.

Of course, such notions are both obvious and revolutionary--so revolutionary in fact that we'd be back to the way electronic maintenance was done prior to say 1980 when maintenance handbooks, revision sheets and circuit diagrams were commonplace and openly available.

However, don't hold your breath. In this age of secrecy, hidden IP info and such, manufacturers would, it seems, prefer to go broke than provide the customers with what they actually want: i.e. reasonable protection that their valuable data won't vanish off into the never-never.

Boffins harvest TV, mobile signals for BATTERY-FREE comms

Re: And is illegal in the UK

"As in the celebrated case of a a farmer using fluorescent tubes with some wire attached to the ends to light his cowshed. He was in the near field of a some large (IIRC BBC) transmitter."

You're right but I was told during a lecture that it was in the U.S. and it was signals from the ultra long wave submarine service (in the 10s of kHz). Perhaps, that's just another case.

Anyway, the net result was that it's considered stealing electricity (by longstanding case law). Seriously, this is a potential problem:

(a) with enough RX antennas absorbing energy, the effective service area will be reduced, and;

(b) increasing the TX power to overcome the increased 'absorption' will lead to excessive and necessary power levels, which, in the extreme, will increase the radio spectrum noise floor. (Increasing noise floor in spectrum management is already a significant issue.)

This getting-power-for-nothing idea has been around for some considerable time. Except for induction charging batteries (a la electric toothbrushes etc.) it's not been very effective. Always guaranteeing sufficient Volts/m to power devices is a problem as signal strength can fluctuate wildly. Whilst signal strength fluctuations are unlikely to cause problems to the the RF link (with AGC, limiting etc.), that cannot be said for devices which have to absorb power from surrounding RF to work.

These devices aren't absorbing low frequency stuff, rather UHF (from the antennas). UHF, of course, is much more prone to nodes and anti-nodes thus more unpredictable/unreliable than the ultra low freq. case to which I referred.

NO, ELEPHANTS, it's we DOLPHINS who NEVER FORGET our best pals

Re: As Sir Terry said...

"...all the better for holding a grudge, or remembering where the other bodies are".

And I thought I was a cynic!

(Besides, I prefer to chance it with smiles than great whites any day.)

Hacktivists torch C4's Jon Snow's web diary, reveal 'nuke strike' on Syria

Ahhh!

Hearing about never-ending hacks and break-ins is becoming wearisome. Like a cracked repeating 78 (if yuh know what that is), the 'noise' is beginning to even irritate this diehard.

How about solutions for a change?

Seagate goes back to ASICs, slurps upstart's brains in return for cash

Seems Seagate has to do something and quickly - but 'tis too late for me.

I've 'boat anchors' surrounding me--boxes of dead Seagate drives with the occasional Samsung and WD drive sprinkled in for good measure.

The angst and time lost recovering data from these reliably unreliable drives has been enormous.

Seagate, in any product form, has been off my shopping list for some considerable time now. I fail to see how this announcement will change that.

Upgraded 3D printed rifle shoots 14 times before breaking

Re: There is no point arguing with closed minds, ignoramuses or bad losers.

1. I'm already on the record about debunking the extent of the 3D claims:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/08/02/household_3d_printer_could_pay_for_itself_in_just_four_months/#c_1911582

2. I did say it would take 50+ years to mature into being practical proposition (as most technologies do--want more examples?)

3. 50 years aren't long. The issues I'm talking about will be centre-stage well before then as this technology is screaming ahead ==> read 3D printing as an inseparable subset of nano technology (i.e.: all that nanotechnology entails).

4. Before you lost sight of what I was about, I was referring to bureaucrats being spooked--not me! The fact is bureaucrats are already spooked. You don't have to be Einstein to figure out bureaucrats will be spooked when you mention illegal weapons, terrorists, illegal drugs, copyright and patent violation in one sentence--or one paragraph for that matter. And thus it's clear to me that it won't be long before draconian regs appear.

5. I never mentioned DNA, you did. But seeing you have:

http://scitechdaily.com/3d-printing-using-dna-could-make-drugs/

...And whilst reading this remember my skepticism and what I said about 50+ years.

6. I did add ...etc., etc., etc. There are any number of similar references in the scientific press if you are prepared search (as it seems the bureaucrats are so doing and succeeding). You could begin with that rag New Scientist which had an article on the subject a short while ago. There are any number of other articles in more learned rags, Nature and Science for instance (I don't have my copies to hand for the refs as they're at work but I'm sure you'll find them online if you look).

7. Back to basics - the concern I'm expressing is that the rampant sensationalism 3D-p is causing (such as this video) will thwart the technology--or more precisely that over regulation in response to emotional gut reaction will lock it up in environments where it can be controlled--i.e.: in proprietary labs of large companies away from the hoi polloi.

8. Keep at it. Clearly you're on course for Gold.

Re: @ ElReg!comments!Pierre - We stand to have access restricted to 3D by spooked bureaucrats.

There is no point arguing with closed minds, ignoramuses or bad losers.

http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v4/n5/full/nchem.1313.html ...

...etc., etc., etc.

@ ElReg!comments!Pierre - Re: We stand to have access restricted to 3D by spooked bureaucrats.

Shame you're so ignorant of the research that's going on in this arena. 3D printing is much more than just printing plastic curiosities.

Perhaps you should spend a few minutes doing some research, here's a few starters:

http://www.ibtimes.com/3d-printing-risks-not-just-plastic-guns-military-parts-drugs-chemical-weapons-1275591

http://theweek.com/article/index/246091/can-you-3d-print-drugs

"Really? I'd think that cristal meth and DNA helixes are a tad out of specs for these printers..."

Sorry, but you're very wrong about this, this technology is a damn side closer than you think. Again, I suggest you check the current state of research on this. (Check the YouTube video in the second link for instance.)

Re: We stand to have access restricted to 3D by spooked bureaucrats.

Sintered materials can be very strong. They've been used in bearings for eons!

Moreover, I can assure you the metal sintered printed products that I have sitting around me--that I'm looking at now--are many times stronger than their plastic counterparts--no matter what plastic substrate is used.

...And don't forget this technology is in its infancy.

I suggest you do a course in material science.

We stand to have access restricted to 3D by spooked bureaucrats.

In the previous article about 3D printers a few days ago in El Reg ('Buy a household 3D printer, it'll pay for itself in MONTHS!') posters raised concerns about:

1. Government regulation because of its ability (or future ability) to manufacture of dangerous things from guns to the assembly of chemicals (explosives), to illegal drugs to the modifying of genetic matter, and;

2. IP, copyright and patents issues. Like copying software, making things in 3D printers based on or copied from the the designs of others will become a nightmare.

Outside, 'toy' versions the machines could even be banned.

As we've seen here, even 3D plastic versions of guns can be dangerous. I've watched 3D metal parts being made and it's clear that a gun made on a metal version of a 3D printer would be a lot more reliable than this plastic one. Even now, any skilled machinist with access to a CNC lathe/milling machine--i.e. an automated machining centre--which are now becoming commonplace--can turn out nasties such as cloned AK47s.

This is very unfortunate as we stand to have access to this exciting technology restricted by spooked/frightened bureaucrats long before the technology is mature and can do anything truly useful.

Earn £8,000 a MONTH with bogus apps from Russian malware factories

Wrong buisness.

Seems most of us are in the wrong business.

Win XP alive and kicking despite 2014 kill switch (Don't ask about Win 8)

@ribosome: Re: Windows 8 FAIL

I hope you have:

"I'm a Windows user - and proud of it"

stamped on your T-shirts.

@Anon Coward - Re: Techies hitting the beach perhaps...

Oh here we go again. Precis a comment and it becomes all too simple and misinterpreted.

1. Stuxnet - who cares? The machines I'm talking about are not connected to the NET and most aren't connected to a LAN either. They're used on simple general purpose apps. If a virus hits--which has never happened then it's just a matter of ghosting the O/S back on--there are no data loss issues (the real problem is hard drives carking it--not viruses).

2. Industrial mother boards that'll run XP I'm taking about--not industrial controllers.

3. On industrial controllers we use real software like QNX O/S--not toys like Windows.

4. Windows XP Embedded--do people really use that stuff? If QNX and dedicated apps aren't suitable then here it's usually Assembler (we like to control the environment, not have it control us).

5. Linux is also commonplace--it's the networked software.

THE FACTS:

6. The ubiquity of Windows means that's it's almost impossible to eradicate completely in industrial environments (but in a mixed environment it can often be isolated to non-critical tasks).

7. You need to get out more! You would be very surprised by the amount of Windows XP and older (Win 2K and NT4) that is still hanging around in industrial and work environments (by work I don't mean offices or work places where you can play solitaire--that's the upgrade market). If Windows is installed in an industrial environment it's usually employed doing some prosaic/utilitarian task and it sits there doing it until it rots. That's a fact.

8. I know of a large multinational German company that's just opened a huge brand new manufacturing factory--most of the general purpose machines run Win XP (they were moved there from another factory and as they worked AOK previously--and as they don't want teething problems at the new establishment--they used what they knew would work first time--XP!

9. Whilst it's not my idea of the best way of doing things, I know of NC (numerical control/CNC) machines whose controllers use Windows (instead of the recognized brands such as the well known FANUC). Moreover, the multi-axis machines I'm referring to cost $600k to 1M or more each and were installed around 2000. The service life of these machines is upwards of 25 years and they came with Windows 2000--the W2K is still running AOK and there's no plans to upgrade it (there is no need as the O/S is a self-contained system--it's just the operator window which links to the machines' industrial controllers).

10. There's many other similar examples of Windows XP in set-and-forget applications. Such applications include displays and even university lecture theatre monitor systems etc. Ask those who run and maintain them and they'll almost universally say "it's working so leave well enough alone--and besides why would I be silly enough to pay Microsoft unnecessarily monies for troublesome upgrades".

Like it or not, it'll be many years before XP is fully eradicated from all these 'industrial' applications.

Remember, not all copies of Windows are installed in corporate offices or on fashion-conscious gamers' machines.

@virhunter - Re: ReactOS?

ReactOS? Why not?

Because the damn product simply DOES NOT WORK.

Even the latest version WILL NOT BOOT on any machine that I have here. It just crashes.

ReactOS is going nowhere. Very unfortunately -- tragically even!!

@ecofeco - Re: Mark my words

You are absolutely correct, but as I said in my earlier post, we're not upgrading come 2014.

I say again - simply because Microsoft has no satisfactory replacement for XP!

Yes, there's upgrades but they do not do exactly what XP does. Nor do the newer Windows O/Ses have exactly what we want by way of features (WinFS or a new filing system for instance).

@AC - Normal upgrades barred - yes, security patches no!

That was the point about Win XP service pack 3 - it was supposed to install on all those crappy machines with questionable licences.

No new functionality as with licenced product, but M$ deemed that security patches going to all was a good idea.

@Yet Another Anonymous coward -- Re: @Mephistro - Yeah, but why should he have to?

What you say about Hyperterm is absolutely correct.

Nevertheless, my comment was meant in the generic sense--and that's true too.

;-)

Tor servers vanish as FBI swoops on kiddie-smut suspect

@theodore - Re: oh boy

Think common sense.

Who invented TOR/Onion Routing? Why the U.S. Government of course.

2+2 does actually = 4.

Frankly, I wouldn't use TOR for anything really secure

I rarely use TOR/Onion routers, and then I only use them out of frustration to overcome the irritating IP location-based blocking (watching online TV outside the viewing region and such).

It seems to me that trusting TOR with anything truly secure is a dangerous move. I do not believe--nor I'm not convinced--that the internet can ever be truly secure when messages are sent, say, between Alice and Bob and both their IP addresses are known and linked to them personally.

The internet cannot work unless IP addresses are 'published'. And as we've seen with recent revelations, government has back-door access to all those IP addresses--and probably access to servers along the way which would allow man-in-the-middle attacks.

With government having so much access to the internet, and with its very powerful pattern matching capabilities aided by super computers which are triggered at the first sight of encrypted text, you'd be mad to trust your secrets to the net.

Moreover, no one has shown that programs such as Mozilla Firefox can ever be truly secure.

In my opinion, TOR/Onion routers etc. should only be used in once-off emergencies such as a dissident trying to escape an oppressive regime.

A few high profile cases such as this might eventually serve to warn the world that the internet can never be truly secure in the same way as most us know that you never say anything on a public telephone network that you don't want the world to know about.