Posts by RobHib

Kids hack Canadian ATM during LUNCH HOUR

Wounderful stuff

I'll employ 'em.

(For legit work of course.)

Israel develops wireless-malware-injection-by-smartmobe tool

Re: Agreed -- @ Paul Crawford

BTW, whilst eliminating mobile phones from workers today might me nigh on impossible, a secure environment could easily ensure the cell phones were only ones without an internet connection (and that was the condition of entry/employment etc. I'd not think this not unreasonable in a nuclear research establishment and such ).

Such phones do still exit. My own cell phone is an LG (model A-190) which has no internet connection (only phone and text). This is deliberate, I prefer to use a laptop or netbook.

Agreed -- @ Paul Crawford

Agreed, if you have a detector sniffing the RF leakage from keyboards, screens etc. then you can sniff that. Years ago, PGP had a secure view (video) mode to overcome that problem.

Infecting a machine that doesn't have 'sensors' [receivers] to detect a RF data stream is another matter altogether. Even if theoretically possible, doing so from a low powered cell phone that already has a severely limited range of transmitter frequencies (~1GHz or so plus the usual wireless and Bluetooth stuff) is highly unlikely (and you'd have to know a reasonable amount about the internal electronics etc. to have a sporting chance). Even with a reasonably high powered transmitter with a theoretical DC-to-daylight frequency output range then you'd still have a problem.

Seems to me Suxnet could only get onto the centrifuge via exciting hardware ports: wireless, LAN, USB, floppy disk etc., lots of stray RF near computers usually crashes them.

Revealed: GCHQ's beyond top secret Middle Eastern internet spy base

Re: I am So Proud -- @ AC

"...we seem to have a rather world class spying and surveillance network out there."

No one is doubting that, even its strong detractors would openly acknowledge that. GCHQ has its lineage in a long line of spies that go back many centuries.

Take the case of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. In 1585/6, during the ongoing struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism, Elizabeth's secretary, Francis Walsingham successfully spied on Mary which led to her execution.

Walsingham was the master spy of Elizabethan England, GCHQ's lineage goes back at least that far.

Walsingham's well worth a read (scroll down to 'Espionage' and 'Entrapment of Mary, Queen of Scots'):

Francis Walsingham

Re: J'accuse -- @ T. F. M. Reader

I assume you are referring to AC's comments and not my reply to him. I'll comment anyway.

Whether it's relevant depends on one's worldview. As I see it, Zola's accusation of the French Govt. centres around the breaking of the covenant that existed between it and the citizenry and concerned matters of fidelity and (dis)honesty, etc. It's an archetypal case over a century old, it's well known and studied.

(Moreover, in a dictatorship, what happened to Dreyfus would have just been another case of in justice; however in the French Republic where Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité were (and are) a big deal and taken seriously, what the Government did to Dreyfus was not only a mistake but also a disingenuous breach of the covenant—the Government was caught out doing what it thought convenient which was not right, its actions were unacceptable and its bigotry was exposed. Democracy was put under strain.)

As with Dreyfus, current government spying etc. involves government(s) breaking covenants of trust (etc.) with their citizens, and the recent Snowden exposures have shown that, at minimum, they've been overly-secretive, disingenuous and distrustful to a point well above and beyond that which functional (operational) necessity would have dictated.

Again, whether one holds my—and from these posts, a seemingly common view—or those of the NSA or GCHQ depends on one worldview. [Some of] Those in the French Government who read Zola's accusations on the front page of L'Aurore in 1898, considered Zola a traitor, he spilt the beans and blew the Dreyfus case wide open. Zola was a whistleblower par excellence.

Irrespective of the position one takes in this case, the parallels/similarities between Zola's actions and those of Snowden are nothing but striking; it's very difficult to conclude otherwise.

As with Zola, history will ultimately judge these actions.

Re "Impossible. The last government alone passed some 3000 new laws" - - @ AC

"Impossible. The last government alone passed some 3000 new laws".

Absolutely correct! Long before Dreyfus and Zola, 'that ignorance of the law is no defence', was a fundamental conundrum for democracy (and, more than ever, it still is).

No one in a democracy has a hope in Hades of being knowledgeable about all its laws. Thus, by definition (through logical argument) the 'democratic' state is both intimidatory and not democratic (at least in my understanding of the word).

Any true law-abiding citizen would have to end up schizophrenic or do absolutely nothing for fear of breaking the law. The only other option is to put oneself in jeopardy and act without knowledge of the law—thus the conundrum. There is, of course, that other option which is for one to deliberately act unlawfully.

This reasoning is as is old as the hills, it goes back to the Ancient Greeks/Pythagoras who was attributed with saying "No man is free who cannot command himself." Millennia later, [1762] in Book I, Chapter I of the The Social Contract Rousseau develops the idea with is famous statement:

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they." (p49 in my now very-yellowed Penguin Classic paperback—having just checked it.)

Whilst Rousseau and his contemporary, Diderot, had the noble intention of pointing out that citizens were better off submitting to the The General Will of [all] the population than to be subservient to the will of more powerful individuals, it did nothing to stop the French Revolution of 1789 and The Terror which followed—albeit that The Social Contract was published over a quarter century earlier. In fact, The Social Contract is often attributed with contributing, even causing, the Revolution by fuelling the discontent.

What I find so concerning is that so few citizens actually find this seeming paradox disturbing (i.e.: of there being no excuse for violating laws that cannot be substantially let alone fully known). In truth, it's definitely no paradox but a very unpalatable anomaly in our 'supposed' democracies that's used to keep the citizenry in check. Even though several centuries have passed—not to mention the many intervening wars and revolutions—since those famous words in The Social Contract, it seems, from prevailing attitudes, that little hindsight has been gained (and that history is again repeating itself).

With a moment's thought, its consequences are clear: (a) most citizens never extend their freedom to the full extent for fear of 'unknown' law, (b) the bold and unlawful ignore such constraints and thus are often more successful in life than their law-abiding brethren, and (c) those in power exploit the anomaly to both the The State's and their own advantage (à la 'Yes Minister' and even more sinister—such as sending young soldiers off to war to be killed in the name of non-existent WMDs for instance).

Remember, the more The State allows those to obfuscate in its name—no matter what the excuse—the fewer freedoms citizens have. Overwhelming citizens with tens of thousands of laws which they can never expect to fully understand is obfuscation, and every new law that's passed further restricts a citizen's freedom.

Re: Britain's got secrets -- @ Jason Bloomberg

"Big Brother isn't running the show from parliament nor Downing Street. You are simply looking at puppets there."

Right. I can remember the time when Tony Blair's government was about to come into existence. Blair or one of his cohorts made the promise that they'd reverse the onus of the FOI laws--meaning that all government documents would, by default, be unclassified and available and that public servants etc. would have to apply to have them classified otherwise.

At the time I thought this was a deliberate election promise for the truly gullible or they were just damn stupid if they actually believed they could pull it off.

Of course 'Big Brother isn't running the show from parliament nor Downing Street', but his stronger-than-spider's-web strings firmly extend back to HQ (as they've always done).

Re: TRAITORS - - @ DavCrav

"... that isn't a good argument."

Right, the argument is logically correct but that's not the real point!

What's significant and key is that the citizenry's trust in its governance and belief in democracy is low and continues to fall*. That even the act of surveillance is made covert by The State (rather than just its substance) is further aiding and abetting that belief/perception.

__

* Just tally the up/down votes on this story/posts alone and there's little doubt as to the truth of this statement. Even with the wildly anarchical tendencies of many El Reg readers, the stats are too strong to fudge. The figures are too strong to conclude otherwise for the general population.

Re: TRAITORS -- @AndrueC

"Like all EU member states we have abolished the death penalty for all crimes."

Just because it's the current status quo doesn't mean it will always be so. From time immemorial the death penalty was ever present in most countries until recently; with recent politics moving to the extreme right in many places, there's more than a possibility such laws could be reversed.

Citizens' vigilance is essential to see they're not.

Re: TRAITORS — @ I ain't Spartacus

"And I'm perfectly happy for that to include allies like Angela Merkel."

Perhaps you're right. Irrespective, I reckon these Snowden (and associated ) revelations are of such an extent that they've the power to shock even the complacent into action in ways that The Secret State and similar revelations were never able to do.

Furthermore, with the enormous proliferation of smartphones worldwide, millions are now aware they're being snooped upon by their governments—and even if they're as innocent and white as newly-fallen snow, they're left with nasty feelings of their privacy having been violated.

This could change the ballgame altogether. In the past, people never responded to the The Secret State and such revelations so emphatically as they have now done here; back then these matters were more abstract, now they're immediate, up-close and personal. The CERN scientists' newly and promptly developed encrypted email based in Switzerland is likely only the beginning of considerable research and development in obfuscating communications.

Currently, the 'weakness' in mail is that interception is easy, as the source and destination addresses are known or can be readily determined—certainly so with IP addresses (with snail-mail knowing the source may be more problematic but the destination is usually clear). Even if mail is encrypted, its metadata is abundantly clear (and thus useful to interceptors).

As I've mentioned in previous posts on similar matters, it seems to me there'll not only be considerable research into encrypted email that's easily used but also in ways of bringing stenography back into the main stream. However, stenography isn't as easy as it seems. Data that's obfuscating messages can be statistically analysed which reveals the presence of messages even if they're not able to be decrypted and the metadata (sender/receiver's ID etc.) may indicate reasons for intent to obfuscate.

To get around the metadata problem, any modern form of stenography would have to obfuscate both source and destination addresses. I've little idea how this would be achieved except to say that it would perhaps have to involve the 'smearing' of addresses over multitudes of servers combined with say breaks in the communications chain—by say inserting wireless links into cable/fibre paths to disrupt directly-traceable routes. (Radio circuits would enable source and destination to appear at different virtual locations other than actual real ones. If a fuzzy distributed system that used smartphone wireless connections were ever conceived then tracing source and destination would be a nightmare if nigh on impossible.)

If heavy-duty research into such methods hasn't already begun then I'd be mightily surprised.

Re: TRAITORS @AC no.1 - - @ El Reg

[El Reg, it would seem like a good idea to number ACs as above. Numbering each AC would reduce confusion when referring to earlier posts or following threads especially when there's many, as here. Alternatively, indent or colour-code threads.]

Re: TRAITORS - @ Luke 11

" TRAITORS... ...You people absolutely disgust me.

Perhaps it's real democracy at work! At the time of my reading, the votes were to the tune of 14/193. That's almost 14:1 against your view!

With numbers like that, it's little wonder our supposed democracies have to keep even the very existence of such surveillance secret.

US bloke raises $250k to build robo-masturbation device

Re: Software Defined Wanking - @Bertie D'astard

... without any backdoor exploits :-)

Exploits such as the common and inconvenient "I've got a headache" virus, perhaps?

;-)

TrueCrypt considered HARMFUL – downloads, website meddled to warn: 'It's not secure'

Re: Oh bugger!

This might be useful to someone. My versions are as follows:

TrueCrypt 6.1a:

– Modified: 28-12-2008, 07:48. – File size: 3,142,768 bytes

TrueCrypt 6.3

– Modified: 18-11-2009, 22:48. – File size: 3,358,808 bytes

TrueCrypt 6.3a

– Modified: 22-02-2010, 08:57. – File size: 3,358,880 bytes

TrueCrypt 7.1

– Modified: 07-09-2011, 00:21. – File size: 3,470,688 bytes

TrueCrypt 7.1a

– Modified: 10-02-2012, 03:30. – File size: 3,466,248 bytes

___

All files been on this system since: 29-11-2012

Local timezone: GMT: +10 (+11 summer, southern h.)

I'll do CRCs if anyone needs them. (BTW, I'm not using them on this system, storing EXE's only--nothing important enough to encrypt.)

Panasonic pulls pyromaniac batteries

I know from experience the dangers of Li batteries.

It's not much further back than a decade or so when lithium batteries had to be transported by sea—taking them on board passenger aircraft was a no-no. (I was involved with an outfit that had major problems because of sea transport delays.)

From what I can gather, Li batteries are particularly prone to internal shorts from impurities etc. (i.e.: caused by cheap, insufficiently-purified ingredients or metal shards leftover from manufacture).

I had one of the great scares of my life some years back when I had a box of primary Li AA batteries with pigtail connectors (for circuit board mounting) and one battery somehow managed to get its pigtail leads shorted. The batteries, 20 or so, were individually separated in Styrofoam and wrapped in a tough plastic bag which, in turn, was in a solid two-ply cardboard box and the box was in a solid plastic storage container about the side of a milk crate.

I was several metres from the box when the battery exploded. The explosion was deafening, the plastic wrapping was shredded the size of confetti and distributed across the room, tiny bits of Styrofoam the size of a match head were everywhere, the cardboard box disintegrated into tiny pieces and the plastic container had one side completely blown out, and the case of the cell had peeled open from top to bottom. There's no doubt that had the shrapnel (the exploding case) hit me when it exited the plastic container I'd have been seriously injured or even killed (the case left a ricochet dent in the nearby wall).

Moral, there's so much energy in Li batteries that they shouldn't be treated casually as one does with say AA alkaline batteries, also ensure you buy the best brand available.

French Hacker Legion is West's foremost snoop squad says Robert Gates

Not a bit surprised!

Not surprised really, France has always been a law unto itself; and hypocrisy has never particularly worried the French.

After all, the French were the driving force behind the Berne Copyright Convention of 1886—Victor Hugo and his cronies. We owe the enormous strength of modern copyright law to the French who argued so fervently for strong copyright at Berne. Even today, the French are extremely strong on all matters pertaining to intellectual property laws and IP generally.

That said, copyright and IP only seem to matter when they're aggrieved.

__

I've French relatives and this article reminds me of something they've said to me on more than one occasion "You Anglophone speakers—especially the UK—are France's 'natural' enemy, it's always been thus! So, why during the 20th C. have you been so stupid as to spend so much time fighting your brothers the Germans? (They're grateful of course.)

Conversations usually end thus:

"Mais que pouvez-vous attendre d'un bouledogue stupide?"

[Excuse my French.]

WORLD HISTORY in SELFIES: So AMAZEBALLS your EYES will EXPLODE

Errrr.

Ticket to Mars please.

Tesla's top secret gigafactories: Lithium to power world's vehicles? Let's do the sums

Re: I'll admit to being hugely biased here - @ Tim Worstal

I too have been a fan of fuel cells since I first heard about them being used in space flights. But where are they in everyday life? They can't be classes as AWOL as they never arrived in the first place.

A few years back I recall reading that the laptop battery problem would be soon solved by a small fuel cell that used ethanol (or was it methanol). The plan was that the cell would oxidise the alcohol and whenever it needed a top-up the user could inject alcohol from squirt bottle/pressure pack etc. in the way cigarette lighters are recharged. It made perfect sense to me and still does.

...But it too never eventuated.

For 50 years or so, fuel cells have been hyped and hyped but in practice they've come to absolutely nought.

Why so?

LG G3 fights off screen-res war rival Samsung with quad-HD cutie: In pictures

Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone -- @Mage

"Ideally you want a screen resolution twice as many pixels in each direction as you can see finest detail.

You're right as it takes into account Nyquist's sampling requirements. Whilst agreeing with most of what you say, I'd suggest the limiting resolutions of the eye are even higher (see my post below). As I've said the matter of resolution is complex (and it's clearly misunderstood by some other posters to this page).

As you say contrast is very important and edge resolution (B-to-W transition) is enhanced if the contrast is maintained across the transition (i.e.: with sufficient bandwidth ensures a sharp transient).

BTW, edge transient sharpening has been known about for centuries, letterpress printers would allow the ink to puddle in the edges and serifs of the typeface (imprinted indents in the paper common in letterpress) thus increasing the density of the ink at the edges which gave the perception that the typefaces were actually sharper than they really were.

Incidentally, the same technique is used in video and television, here cable equalisers etc. are invariably used to sharpen images. They reduce the spearing of the B-to-W transitions on images (caused by HF/bandwidth losses) by enhancing the transient (reducing the B-to-W transition time, and often the edge transient is driven into overshoot [exceeding the transient's 100% amplitude] to give an apparent increase in sharpness). Also, this is effectively the same process Photoshop's unsharp mask uses to sharpen images

Bring on the higher resolutions, the higher the better.

"While some may argue the eye can’t detect this level of detail, LG begs to differ, and gave high-resolution printing in coffee-table books as an example of demand for eye-popping images."

It's good to see resolutions creeping up like this, ultimately the jaggies will be a thing of the past.

For those who question the question the resolution as excessive, I too would bring in the wisdom of high resolution printing. Those in the printing trade have known for centuries that print starts looking really good at over 1000 dpi--and good letterpress printing can exceed 2000 dpi. When offset printing came in many old-time printers were horrified as they considered it low quality and out of focus (even good offset is usually below 1000 dpi).

To put this into perspective, I suggest you consider an A4 or US Quarto sheet with printing on it with at 1000 dpi resolution. Let's calculate for A4 (210 x 297mm):

1000dpi / 25.4 = 39.37 dots per mm **

297 x 39.37 = 11692.89 dots per page (vertical)

210 x 39.37 = 8267.7 (horiz)

OK, so a traditionally printed A4 page at reasonable resolution printing has somewhere about: 11600 x 8200 discreet transitions from black to white, for a really high quality book that figure can be more than doubled. For other formats such as high quality maps etc. the specs are horrendous (but then, unlike an A4 or Quarto, page one doesn't take in all that detail at once).

This brings in FOV (field of view), which is nominally taken as somewhere around 60° for the human eye. So, from centuries of experience, what is on a normal office sheet of paper (A4 etc.) is designed to approximately match the maxim amount the human eye can perceive at one time at a distance from the eye that matches a FOV corresponding to 60° (I'll let you calculate the distance).

What's intriguing is that when you put sheets printed at 1000 dpi next to identical ones but printed at 2000 dpi, those with normal vision have little trouble picking the difference.

Again, comparisons with existing monitors is pretty pointless really as one has to consider the FOV, which simply means that the distance between your eyes and the screen will be reduced or increased accordingly to account for the physical size of the screen (comfort and the limiting resolution of one's eye's taken into account of course).

__________

** For the pernickety, I'm well aware things are more complicated than this: centre versus peripheral vision, spatial resolution, limiting resolution, modulation depth and that dpi aren't exactly pixels--Kell factor, effective resolution, squareness of pixels etc. What I attempted to show is that for printing a 1000dpi is not unusual and that represents a page [screen] size of about 11600 x 8200 B-to-W transitions on a page which is well above 2560 x 1440px (which incidentally is the resolution of my Dell 2711 monitor). It's also well above the new 4k standard not to mention the 8 and 10k standards. Remember those super hi-res standards wouldn't have been introduced or proposed unless the eye could make use of them).

World's first ever Nobel Prize winning integrated circuit to be auctioned

Let's hope.

Well, I hope it ends up where it truly belongs: in a tech museum somewhere.

This is spectacularly important tech history and it should be on show for all to see it.

French teen fined for illegal drone flight

Spectacular, but at what ultimate cost?

Now, I've been to Nancy quite awhile ago but I don't remember seeing the city in such a spectacular way.

Wow, with images of that quality possible and drones now cheap, this is only the beginning. Even if illegal, reckon there'll be those who'll even be prepared to sacrifice the hardware for such high quality data.

With anonymous radio links and drones dumped in some inaccessible place at the end of a run (in the ocean etc.), then the evidence about perpetrators might be difficult to come by. One thing's for certain: with high definition cameras and tiny drones now easily available, we can say 'we ain't seen nothin' yet.'

And with the privacy issue already with us and spiraling out of control--not to mention its potential to put Google Earth to shame (such as flying 'disposables' over military targets already blanked out in Google Earth thus exposing them) then I reckon this technology is in for a very rocky ride.

(Remember, the US classified encryption as a munition and it got Phil Zimmermann into a lot of trouble when PGP was exported. This camera/drone technology has incredibly powerful uses and there's huge (and easy) potential for it to be abused, thus it could easily come under similar control. Seems to me that unless there's some resolution about how it's to be used then governments are likely to make its possession by the hoi polloi illegal. Let's hope that doesn't happen.)

...Meanwhile I'll drink to Nans Thomas for a splendid effort.

Stephen Hawking: The creation of true AI could be the 'greatest event in human history'

I just wish....

...that 'ordinary' AI had reached a sufficient level of development that OCR would (a) actually recognize what's scanned and not produce gibberish, and (b) provided me with a grammar checker that's a tad more sophisticated than suggesting that 'which' needs a comma before it or if no comma then 'that' should be used.

Seems to me we've a long way to go before we really need to worry, methinks.

New secure OS will put Tails between NSA's legs

Makes sense.

...it boots from removable media rather than a hard disk

This is very significant. Once we could install an OS on a hard disk then flick a read-only DIL switch and the disk would be hardware write protected.

Today, we no longer have the option of protecting hard disks by enabling hardware write-protect. This feature of HDs seemed to have disappeared with the appearance of the IDE drive. The question of why write-protect was disabled on HDs has to my mind never been answered. Hardware write protection for the OS is a very significant factor in protecting the OS against alteration and patching etc. thus a very significant security factor.

It makes considerable sense to develop OSes such as this, that it's not been done previously (in recent times that is) is surprising.

Voters pick luminous tech spacesuit as NASA's off-world fashion statement

@ James Hughes 1 -- Re: @ Wzrd1 -- Oh dear.... @RobHib

In a country that's lost interest in space research, ipso facto its consistent nuking of NASA's budget over the last 20 or so years, it's preposterous for NASA to be wasting its very limited resources on planning manned flights to other planets. (Of course, the ISS would be an exception.) The precious remaining resources should be put to the most effective use which is in the development of specialised unmanned flights or Hubble's replacement etc.

Thus, the whole concept of developing space suits of the type envisioned here is essentially a waste of time.

Sorry, I thought this would have been obvious.

Note: I'm far from being opposed to manned space flights, but they're better left to counties who've a genuine interest and commitment to space science, China for instance. The glory days for NASA are long gone and it should not let the remaining band of Flash Gordon aficionados within NASA waste its time and effort. NASA's best approach would be to send them all off to learn Chinese.

@ Wzrd1 -- Re: Oh dear....

Pity that you never noticed the program or the idiocy of the reporting.

I did in fact. The fact that NASA is even considering such matters ought to be a good enough excuse to revise its obviously excessive budget.

Oh dear....

luminous ID and being designed for comfort and movement are fine, but fashion and other sartorial considerations are a bloody waste of time and money.

Anonymous develops secure data over ham radio scheme

@Paul J Turner -- Re: @Gray -- Sorry to spoil the fun, but ...

There's little doubt that if anonymous encrypted transmissions are allowed on the amateur bands then this is tantamount to amateurs giving away their bands as they'll effectively lose control of them.

That such a proposal is being considered at all I find amazing. It's not that long ago that amateurs were required to transmit in plain language and in the language of the jurisdiction under which they were operating--in the UK that meant any TX had to be in plain English whether it be voice or CW.

If for some reason that the Anonymous proposal goes ahead, either legally or illegally, then amateurs have to be concerned. Even if it falls flat on its face then there's still no cause for complacency.

As I've said elsewhere in these posts, it's clear that the TCP/IP - IP internet addressing structure of the internet is a godsend for monitoring authorities as it makes monitoring traffic so damn easy, thus there's now enormous pressure to find technical solutions and wireless is a strong contender to be one of the components (as I outlined earlier), thus there'll be enormous pressure brought to bear on the amateur bands.

Whether we like it or not, I believe what Anonymous is doing here with the amateur bands is just the beginning. Sooner or later, whether by avalanche or steady creep, the real and increasing pressure to find technical solutions to the IP-address monitoring problem will involve wireless transmission.

What's extremely disconcerting not only for amateur radio but for spectrum users generally is that spectrum management ain't what it use to be! The conservative. tightly-regulated spectrum of say WARC-'79 (ITU World Administrative Radio Conference) and years earlier no longer exists*. All around the world spectrum management has been deregulated, spectrum authorities neutered or outsourced together with the introduction of abominable practices such as spectrum auctions replacing traditional licensing of spectrum on an as-needed basis.

I've thought about this problem for ages and I cannot see how it can be solved without using wireless technology (as it's considerably less controllable by governments than cables). Barring a major political breakthrough that would restrict government monitoring or make it transparent, which seems extremely unlikely, then there'll be pressures to find solutions by groups such as Anonymous--or even governments (especially non-English speaking ones).

Perhaps some bright spark will find a bullet-proof way of making standard IP addresses anonymous by either distributing--smudging--them across thousands of IP addresses and or encrypting them. If so, then finding alternatives to the existing cable system might be averted.

One thing is certain: the cat is out of the bag and this problem isn't going away any time soon. The reason seems obvious: in our Western societies there's a fundamental disenchantment with the way our democracies are working--the perception being that citizens are having less say and becoming less powerful and our governance more authoritarian--and monitoring and tracking everything citizens do is an overwhelming sign of this.

All up, it seems to me that this doesn't bode well for traditional spectrum users.

Let's hope I'm wrong.

____________

* Proof positive of this is governments' acceptance of diabolical assaults on the spectrum such as BPL/PLT/PLC. Prior to say WARC-'79, 'BPL'--the concept of using power transmission lines as the world's largest antenna to broadcast 'noise'--could have only been imagined in the mind of an anarchist intent on bringing the world's communication to a halt, but in recent years such concepts have not only become thinkable but also acceptable. I am still dumbfounded how radio engineers, IEEE et al, allowed this abomination to even get a footing (I've an answer but that's another story). That it did makes me very pessimistic for the future of good spectrum management.

@Gray -- Re: Sorry to spoil the fun, but ...

The FCC might have more success but consider this. For years and years, London has had a pirate radio problem that authorities have not been able to close down. This is no tiny operation but a fully fledged illegal radio service operating under the nose of the authorities.

Have a look at this program timetable (it's alive and well on the net and it's not being censored):

London's Pirate Radio Stations.

Well, it's not only London, but Italy and other countries are also rampant with such services. Moreover, with most countries having essentially shut down, amalgamated or outsourced their spectrum management authorities over the past 30 or so years, they've neither the will nor resources to close these pirates down.

Like if or not, spectrum anarchy reigns.

BTW, I'm far from being a spectrum anarchist--just the opposite in fact, read my posts going way back on this topic and you'll realise it. All I'm doing is stating a reality.

@RobHib -- I should add...

As I've mentioned previously in these posts, the IP method of addressing across the internet is a godsend for those in surveillance--even at its most basic, pinging and trace-route and such can tell you a great deal about users.

However, I've surmised that it will only be a matter of time before someone perfects a distributed addressing scheme whereby the source and destination addresses are encrypted and 'distributed' (using dynamically changing addresses at different locations such as there is no single IP address to track). A simplistic (and hardly accurate) analogy will suffice here: consider radio broadcasting--one broadcasts a signal but unlike the internet there's no way to determine who's actually receiving the transmissions--all listeners are technically anonymous.

Perfect such a schema in both directions and you've a major problem to determine who's 'transmitting' and 'receiving' packets let alone determine what's actually being transmitted. On the internet, such a scheme is very difficult to achieve--if not impossible, as the existing system/technical infrastructure is essentially hard-wired with 'known' IP addresses and standardised TCP/IP protocols etc. On the other hand, if you change the physical transport layer and IP protocols completely (design a new system from scratch) then we've a new ballgame altogether. Moreover, wireless has the potential to do just that.

Again, for any new schema, wired systems pose a major problem (as ISPs, telcos, governments etc. control every aspect of the net. Even rights of way (cableways) are controlled.

Clearly, wireless spectrum provides the means to bypass all the controlled infrastructure; and I'll bet that even if this Anonymous scheme fails, then others will attempt it. Even though illegal to transmit without authority, it'll be damn hard to control. Anyone who remembers Radio Moscow and Radio Peking versus Radio America during the Cold War days will attest to this. Despite huge resources and millions spent by both sides in trying to jam out each other's radio broadcasts, I along with everyone else had absolutely no trouble listening to all the protagonists.

Trouble is the electromagnetic spectrum is a severely limited resource, and if anarchy breaks out then there's trouble for all spectrum users. Nevertheless, newly designed wireless networks with new encrypted and distributed protocols have the potential to shaft all those are spying on users.

BTW, it's occurred to me that a new encrypted/distributed wireless network could be used in conjunction with the existing internet. If the wireless network were only used for controlling the internet (switching IP addressees, servers at random etc.) then trying to monitor internet traffic might turn into a nightmare (as crucial control information would be sent by encrypted/ and distributed wireless). If only addressing and control information were limited to wireless then it's likely wireless traffic might be manageable.

Well, well, well, that's going to put the cat amongst the pigeons!

Well, that's going to put the cat amongst the pigeons. The ultra conservative amateur radio movement won't know what's hit it.

That said, I've wondered for some time how long it would take to use the aether to replace the now-parasitised cable network. Of course, anyone who knows the basics of radio communications and spectrum management will know that the amateur bands would be clogged out of existence if even a tiny part of the internet traffic were to go by long-distance wireless. Even short-hop local (across-city) VHF/UHF bands would clog up if realistic traffic loads were imposed on them.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty damn sure that wireless: HF, VHF/UHF, microwave, moon-bounce* or whatever are already used to bypass ISPs or to fly under the surveillance 'RADAR'. Still, anyone who thinks they'll escape detection will be in for a big surprise. Spy satellites already monitor just about any RF from DC to daylight.

Of course, having a separate wireless network will cause havoc for the NSA if for no other reasons than any old protocol could be used (even the OSI model subverted), and that if part of the traffic were sent by wireless and other parts by the existing internet (or by other circuits) then the likes of the NSA, GCHQ et al will have to work overtime (having only part of a data stream is somewhat inconvenient, methinks).

Presumably that's the intent.

_____________

Joke -- the data rates would be so slow, they'd be in Voyager-1 league.

Sony nanotechnicians invent magnetic tape that stores 148 Gb per square inch

Re: Time to fill

If tape transports remain the same or similar then data steaming off the tape will increase directly in proportion to the increased bit density. There's caveats however: at such densities tape handling will likely be slower so as to avoid tape damage, improve tracking etc. Also, to ensure storage remains error-free then it's likely the additional area required by error-checking codes will probably be substantially larger than we're currently used to (this will reduce the effective [operational] density significantly).

Truly impressive densities.

That density is truly impressive. I've always been a fan of tape but I'd just about given it up for all the obvious reasons. If Sony can actually pull this density off in a realistic practical way then this will truly put tape back in the mainstream.

Moreover, densities of 148 Gb/in^2 are sorely needed, as there's a desperate need for good long-term high density archiving storage and such. We've been hitting the stops for awhile now--storing large amounts data on disks is fraught with problems, existing tape insufficiently dense etc., and all the other promised technologies have yet to eventuate (holographic storage and such have not materialised).

It will be interesting to see how resilient such high density storage actually is in practice. At such densities I'd imagine there'll be very little signal margin, the S/N ratio being such that sophisticated data separators (a la hard disks) will be required as a matter of course. It's worth keeping in mind that traditional tape loses remanence at the rate of a few percent per year, so the specs on storage time versus data retention is everything--it's the key issue at these densities.

(It's my understanding that the best HD recordings have magnetic domains that are down to about 100,000 atoms, it'll be interesting to make a comparison when figures become available.)

Most Americans doubt Big Bang, not too sure about evolution, climate change – survey

@ DocJames -- Re: @ecofeco -- Human nature being what it is, a Dark Age is never far away.

...Forgot to make this observation. It's worth noting that comment by the father about travelling to the moon may be "quicker than we think" was pretty prophetic. 1955 was 14 years before the moon landing and more than half a decade before Kennedy announced that the US was going to the moon.

I recall when Kennedy made the statement about going to the moon that most of us most of us treated it with considerable incredulity. For that reason alone, it's an impressive doco.

Re: @ecofeco -- Human nature being what it is, a Dark Age is never far away.

Right, more should see it.

People like me crap on about this subject all the time and most of the younger generations just say we're exaggerating. Fact is, there's the evidence!

As I've done, tell others about it.

@ jimbo60 -- Re: give me a break

I know it's time to turn off the computer when I 'degenerate' into reading emphatic posts such as yours.

...But before I do let me say things aren't as emphatically simple as you make out. First, I understand your frustration because this debate has been full, as you say, of garbage science, faulty and misused statistics, dishonesty, secrecy and refusal to allow independent verification, etc. That I agree with, and it's come from both sides of the debate.

However, what you are doing is exactly the same when you say there's overwhelming evidence when there isn't..., etc. Increasing the rhetoric will not solve the problem, only a logical analysis of the fundamental underlying issues will so do. And even then the issues are so complex it may take generations to solve.

Let me make these few points:

In other posts to this article I strongly advocate Dalton's inductive Scientific Method for several reasons:

1. The Scientific Method actually works in practice.

2. I learned it very early on in my scientific training (first few weeks in 1st year high school science) and it was used throughout all of my training from then on, so I'm used to it.

3. There's good historical and practical reasons for pushing this line, the Scientific Method has excellent linage.

4. For this El Reg debate, arguing past Dalton's Scientific Method seemed to me to have little merit, as grinding things even finer with El Reg readers doesn't usually win one brownie points. After all, discussion about the Scientific Method is already running the argument finer than most of the debate, either in El Reg or elsewhere. Said simply, bringing the Scientific Method into the debate is refining the argument well past the usual emotive outbursts from both sides, and thus it ought to be sufficient for any practical purposes.

Now, to show arguments surrounding scientific research can be even more complex in that the Scientific Method itself has come under question by Empirical Falsification logic as espoused by Karl Popper circa 1935--and since then even Popper's theory has itself come under criticism.

What I'm saying is that the climate change debate, as argued almost everywhere, is a pretty crude one, and that going back to first principles and analysing the problem from basic by using the Scientific Method is refining the process considerably.

However, to up the ante by introducing Popper's Empirical Falsification into the debate is, by any measure, vastly increasing the sophistication of the argument--so much so that the usual protagonists probably wouldn't recognise it. Nevertheless, some would argue we should proceed down this path.

As Empirical Falsification would be almost impossible to achieve with the climate change debate (it possibly taking centuries before the argument settled down), and as Popper's theories on scientific verification are hot currency, the debate has the potential to become even messier than it already is.

Climate change is already an extremely complex issue with detailed facts still a long way off, let alone proofs forthcoming. Bringing Popper into the equation (as some wish to do) won't solve anything, but is does indicate the potential for how truly complex this debate may become.

@IT Drone -- Re: Creationism proves evolution?

Many a truth told in jest!

Next time, just omit the icon.

;-)

@ doctariAFC2 -- Re: Human nature being what it is, a Dark Age is never far away.

1. I'm not going to debate the methodology or purpose of the survey except to say that if the same questions were asked 50 years ago to a similar group of people then the results would be significantly different. The difference would be that this earlier survey would be much more pro-science to the extent that those being surveyed would think that many of the questions were wacky and made little sense.

Why do I say this? It's simple really, I recall what it was like back then and I assure you that attitudes towards science have changed significantly for the worse since then. Putting empirical values on how attitudes have changed matters little except to say the changes have been very significant (the 1955 Why Study Science? doco referred to earlier makes this glaringly obvious).

2. As I imply further on in the reply "@dan1980 -- Re: The takeaway . . .", back then I and my schoolmates were educated with the tools necessary to ensure that indoctrination was minimal. In other words, I was given tools that taught me to question what I was told--i.e.: not to take the statements of others as gospel but to prove them for myself.

2.1 Largely, this training worked: for instance re climate change, I've listened to both sides of the argument and I've come to the conclusion that the matter is a great deal more complicated than either side in the debate would have us believe. Without going into specifics, the propaganda from both sides has made matters worse--it's delayed implementing what really needs to be done (which, on the evidence I've seen, is somewhat different to anything proposed by the major protagonists). I'm not alone, many other minor players have come to similar conclusions.

2.2 I've little doubt that the paucity of today's public discourse/debates--whether about science or politics or whatever--is because very few understand how to conduct such debates. Almost no one seems to understand formal logic--logical argument with subjects and predicates, nor how to conduct such debates, nor do they fully understand the scope and relevance of even their own entrenched positions.

2.3 To illustrate that last sentence: in science, if you do not have a good grasp of the long-established scientific method then trying to determine factual scientific/physical laws from alchemy is fraught with problems. Today--where short cycles are everything--it's too much trouble to cut to the fundamental core of the problem and analyse problems in depth. It's much easier to analyse the superficial, or as I like to call it, use 'Twitter-level analysis'.

2.4 Understanding and applying the scientific method is crucial for science as it ensures the integrity of scientific development, however it's not everything. The underlying philosophy of what one is attempting to research is also very important. This involves both logical and moral argument. For example, just understanding the chemistry for say 'improved' versions of VX nerve gas alone may be intellectually and scientifically challenging but without a proper moral framework in which to develop such work we end up with science of the kind as carried out by the detestable Nobel Prize winner Fritz Haber.

2.5 Thus, we also need the rich cultural framework in which to both carry out science and educate the public in science. I contend that despite the vastly increasing complexity of the the world's political, environmental and scientific problems, that in fact the arguments involving their solutions are becoming increasingly shallow. The reasons for this are complex but primarily they're the consequence of the public's less rigorous understanding of science than it had decades ago. Simply, our approach to problem-solving is going in the wrong direction.

@Don Jefe --- Re: Fake sceince science too

"There's no money in science unless you're crooked or selling lab equipment."

Unfortunately, you're correct. Employers have always played on the fact that techies of all sorts will work for peanuts when given the opportunity to work on science and technology that they truly enjoy doing.

I know for a fact that I'd be much better off financially had I worked in other fields such as banking and finance. Instead, I mostly enjoyed doing comparatively low-paying work in fields that interested me. (When at school and uni I cannot once recall thinking that I would aim to enter a high-paying career--the discipline itself was always paramount.)

These days, kids are very much more attuned to what careers pay than when I started, thus many give science and technology jobs a wide berth (and they often start doing so at school by opting for either no science or the absolute minimum). In turn, this has produced a society that's less knowledgeable about science than it was years ago. And less knowledge usually means less interest.

Today, science also suffers from its high degree of specialisation, thus after years of training, some job-hunters cannot get jobs--or have difficulty in moving jobs due to their years of having specialised in one particular field.

Essentially, science and many technology jobs just don't have the glamour they once did, thus even gifted students often make pragmatic decisions to enter careers that ideally wouldn't be their first choice.

As I see it, these issues are serious problems confronting both science and society (they underpin and often trivialise many of today's scientific problems such as climate change, nuclear power, etc.).

@dan1980 -- Re: The takeaway . . .

The question then becomes - why do so many people who have not critically analysed the data with a trained and experienced eye decide that those who have are wrong?

If the Scientific Method--of Dalton et al--is properly ingrained during one's education at a sufficiently early age (as it was with me) then one knows precisely what to do with data whether it's speculation or raw scientific statistics, etc.

A proper understanding of the Scientific Method equips one to analyse and validate scientific claims/evidence whether they're from technocrats, scientists or charlatans. It's a no-brainer to want to know the Scientific Method: with such methodology to hand even if one doesn't like certain scientific conclusions, one understands that it makes no sense to argue against them unless one uses similar methods to refute them.

When I went to high school science was compulsory, and the Scientific Method was ingrained from day one!

Clearly, something has gone wrong in education in recent decades, as many, many people can no longer judge fact from crap. (I suggest you check out the link in my post above to compare current attitudes to science with what they were four or five decades ago..

@ecofeco -- Re: Human nature being what it is, a Dark Age is never far away.

If you want an excellent example of how science's esteem has slipped in mainstream cultural thinking over recent decades then take a quick look at this 1955 doco for teenage school kids (≈11 mins) about why they should study science:

Why Study Science?

When I entered high school in the '60s, the values and sentiments expressed by the parents of these teenagers was pretty much the norm everywhere. The adults in this doco echo almost exactly what I experienced throughout my childhood and teenage years--even my grandmother who was not educated in science thought this way!

It's difficult to comprehend that such strongly ingrained beliefs in science across most walks of life can descend into such scepticism in less than one lifetime. It's almost proof that a new Dark Age could descend if the scientifically-literate are not more vigilant.

Human nature being what it is, a Dark Age is never far away.

Years ago, someone said to me that we're only a generation or two away from a Dark Age. I believed it then and I'm even more convinced now. Thus this table is just a reaffirmation.

What I find so very disconcerting is that since about the early 1980s I've noticed this increasing scepticism in science and the rational myself. I've no doubt that the rise of post-modernism and the anti-science movements etc. is largely to blame. What is harder to explain is why scientists and educators lost the plot and let modern-day witchdoctors take over much of the public discourse.

These figures ought to be a wakeup call.

BTW, whilst the US leads the pack in ignorance and illogical beliefs, most of the English-speaking world isn't far behind it. (Although it's interesting to speculate why the uptake of these wacky ideas hasn't promulgated quite as fast elsewhere).

Australians are suckers when it comes to buying tech drugs

@veti -- Re: *Everything* costs more in .au

Or the 130% markup on a pair of Levis?

Absolutely, I recall paying about $35 USD in the US for a pair of Levis, in Oz the same pair was about $110 AUD, (whereas not-too-bad clones of Levis sell in K-Mart for only $19). How such marketing traps so many is remarkable. Not up on drug prices (bit old for that), but I know many Aussies pay top dollar for most things 'fashionable'.

It's been clear to me for quite some time that money in Oz has been far too easy to come by for quite some years. (Heaven help us when the mining boom finishes and we have to then rely on our now non-existent manufacturing industries. We are supposedly now a service economy, but servicing what?)

Russia 'incompatible with the internet', cries web CEO 'axed by Putin'

Hummm.

...Meanwhile, the country's President Vladimir Putin reckons the internet is a CIA stunt.

From what I've read lately, there seems a modicum of truth in there somewhere....

Data retention: encryption won't protect you much

Duh. Come on...

...Doesn't everybody know how it works? Surely?

Want to keep the nefarious from the legit? Then have two phones with different numbers/owners, two PCs and operate them from different locations/networks etc. No contacts/names, addresses, IP addresses, subject matter, etc., etc. on phone A/PC-A should ever appear on phone B/PC-B and vice versa. If phone B/PC-B is used for nefarious activity then keep it near a steamroller or forklift, and when times get hot 'accidentally' run over it and scatter the pieces to the wind.

Better still, don't use the phone at all (or don't get into nefarious activities).

Read a few crime novels, even Agatha Christie would be useful training. Just about every crime thriller/TV drama around is based on linking seemingly unconnected 'metadata' with other 'metadata'--it's the links that ultimately get the villain--so ensure you don't have any.

Detective work has always involved the use of 'metadata' links since the long-gone days of the remarkable Jack Whicher.

;-)

DreamWorks CEO: Movie downloaders should pay by screen size

Well, that'll teach us.

Well, that'll teach us for not objecting much more about HDMI, won't it?

(Now, let's have a guessing competition to guess the next scam from this mob.)

Boffins brew graphene in kitchen blender

@ Dave Pickles -- Re: Condoms?

Graphene and "... the production of thinner condoms"

Humm. The connotations are horrendous.

If you've ever had ingrained graphite power on one's hands then you'll know what I mean. (And if you've ever worked with graphite, you'll also know it doesn't take much rubbing to ingrain it.)

FTC gets judicial thumbs-up to sue firms over data breaches

What if this extended to Windows?

Hum, if that ruling/case law ever gets applied to Microsoft/Windows then life will get really interesting.

Seems to me that consumer legislation, fitness for purpose etc., could apply. The logic goes that if one's OS is easily hacked then by definition it's not 'fit for purpose'.

,

Curiosity finds not-very-Australian-shaped rock on Mars

Home away from Home!

Promote it as a holiday destination or a home away from home and we'll significantly raise Oz's IQ.

(...A surely-needed undertaking.)

>:-)

Apple has THREE TIMES as much cash as US govt, TWICE the UK

@JassMan -- Re: They have to keep all that moolah offshore

"Whoever wrote "Government by the rich for the rich" may have thought he was being sarcastic but never has a truer word been written in jest."

Right, it's fucking disgusting! If we did the same by tiny fractions then they'd lock us up for life and chuck away the key.

Modern 'democracy'—if it can be called that—has always preferentially benefited the rich.