Posts by elDog

FAA approves Amazon US drone flight just months after firm gave up and went to Canada

I wonder if the US Border Patrol (Homeland/Fatherland Security) can shoot them down

I'd much rather our border agents take pot shots at Brown Boxes With A Smile slung under a drone than the poor immigrants from down south.

Just to register a personal opinion (as if the rest isn't): This whole drone thing is going to make life around the world a lot more "interesting". There are all sorts of things that can be delivered when the carriers don't need to travel in flatland - and it's much harder to monitor that extra dimension.

Microsoft's top legal eagle: US cannot ignore foreign privacy laws

Because the US agencies would have to expose their rationale to an outside entity

Currently they get away with snatching all sorts of data from US and overseas people without more than a cursory glance and rubber stamp by the FISA court.

Having to actually present real evidence about who/what they are chasing would be waaaay too much work, thanks.

RELICS of the Earth's long lost TWIN planet FOUND ON MOON

So, you're saying that the Earth is also made of green cheese?

Personally, I like Calvino's words:

"Didn't I realize it? Or had that been my intention from the very beginning? Before I could think properly, a cry was already bursting from my throat. 'I'll be the one to stay with you for a month!' Or rather, 'On you!' I shouted in my excitement: 'On you for a month!' and at that moment our embrace was broken by our fall to the Moon's surface, where we rolled away from each other among those cold scales."

- Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics, "The Distance of the Moon"

Intel and LG: Our new mobe cams COULDN'T CARE LESS about pixels

Pixels still count but I like this direction

Obviously that resolution (2560x1440) is still part of the spec, whether for recording or analysis/playback.

LG has announced a scheme to lend 4,000 LG G4s to people who want to try them for a month. This will happen in 14 different markets with each using its own way to decide who will get a G4 to play with. The UK method has not been announced but will be revealed on the LG UK Twitter feed.

I'm very much interested in a borrowing of this phone. Not sure if it will work with my USofA VerizonWireless account but I'd give it a good go. Now off to my tweet...

Bell Canada pulls U-turn on super-invasive web-stalking operation

Sounds like ATT/Verizon in the lower states

Opt-Out? If possible, required phone calls and emails to major execs.

Opt-In? Hah. Never.

Just a bit of blue sky thinking here, but wouldn't it be possible to require every service provider to list their "things" in a comparable format (XML):

- Bandwidth caps and all rules changing these caps

- Tracking devices and how to disable tracking

- Throttling based on various rules (list them all)

- Last month/year/5-year performance (per-user bandwidth, etc.)

- Last month/year/5-year customer complaints (if believable: satisfaction index)

This or some variation of this should be sent quarterly to their licensing agencies. This should be freely available within 1 month of publishing. This should be verifiable and if found deficient should result in a 3 month warning with public disclosure, and if unresolved the loss of their telecommunications abilities.

Oh, and customers that couldn't get their contracted LOS should be released from their contracts without penalty.

Oh, since many of us are forced to deal with only one ISP (rural or state/country hegemony), this is all a bunch of poopycock.

Stress me, test me, vex me ... boffins seek Hall Effect in frustrated magnets

Re: I don't know about quantum stuff, but I do know about frustration

And the frustrino's "damn-that-was-good" anti-particle which is particularly ephemeral.

I don't know about quantum stuff, but I do know about frustration

I bet that physicists and biologists will find out that frustration is yet another force, probably more powerful than the strong/weak/gravitational (and whatever else is out there.)

Isn't that what drives biology? Or causes friction? Or perhaps gravitation and dark matter? Just stuff lurking out there frustrated that nobody loves it.

Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer

I'd go a bit farther (further, fuhrer, father) and pop up a warning whenever the user (customer) clicks on a website that doesn't say "I WILL NOT TRACK YOU". If the customer (since that's what we are nowadays) wants, they can disable the TRACK notification globally or per site.

Just like we can negotiate protocols while exchanging those getting-to-know-you handshakes, perhaps we should require the site to supply a token that indicates that tracking is not performed. If the site is found cheating, public stoning and blacklists would be appropriate.

Big changes proposed to DNS overseer ICANN

Does this mean that the US has figured out a backdoor into the ICANN process?

Forget about just slurping all the conversations, etc. Perhaps they've also wired in a few buttons in critical voting junctions to make sure that they've retained control (in the name of Democracy, of course.)

WIN a RockBLOCK Mk2 Iridium sat comms unit

SOFTBALL - Strap One Of These to a balloon

http://media.bestofmicro.com/I/7/337615/original/phone.jpg

Iridium 9575 Extreme: First Impression and Specs

The 9575 is not what kids would imagine a phone to look like today. Its appearance and weight is closer to the mid-90s versions of Nokia or Motorola phones. This particular version is dust- and spill-proof (as it is meant to be used outside with direct view to satellites) and covered in a sturdy rubber padding that prevents damage to the phone when it is dropped.

It has a monochrome display (no, it’s not a touch screen) that can show basic graphics, but will, 99 percent of the time, be used for text. The display can show up to 200 characters at once. The phone can text via SMS and supports short emails, has a phone book (up to 100 entries), voicemail, and a choice of eight ring and alert tones. Standby time is about 30 hours; talk time is up to 3.5 hours. These are very conservative numbers. I have seen standby times of up to 45 hours during my review of the phone. The entire phone is 140 x 60 x 27 mm in size, which is about as wide as an iPhone, but the 9575 is significantly longer than and three times as deep as Apple’s phone. It’s not the phone that hides itself in your suit pocket. The phone is even larger when you actually call, as it needs a massive satellite antenna that is pulled out of the shell.

Digital pathology and the big Cs (that’s ‘cancer’ and ‘cloud’)

Hard to argue with the good use of technology in this article

It would be nice to think that in 5-10 years all radiology and pathology samples will be digitised and available for medical and research use. I've already lost most of my privacy so have at it.

I don't think "It’s competing with IBM’s heavy-hitting Watson initiatives..." as the rest of the paragraphs say that there's good room for collaboration.

Mozilla project spits out threat modelling tool for sysadmins

Let's grab the low-hanging ones here - HTTP/S threats only

As anyone who has worked with penetration testing can attest, just looking at the web browser vector is easy, altho it is one of the more fruitful. There are plenty of other external internet vectors such as FTP/S, Telnet, SSH, SOAP, non-HTTP TCP, non-TCP.

Threats can also come from external media, special communications channels, and especially PEBCAK.

AWS flops out massive D to vaporise big data rigs

Truly disappointed that no Windows instance is supplied

I would think that Windows 2003/xx would be able to take advantage of all this sweetness.

Having just attended a Amazon conference in Boston yesterday I was also struck that no Mountain Lion or OSX graced their stacks.

Frayed British Airways plays down mega hack attack on frequent flyer accounts

Frayed? I think that should be Flayed.

"At this stage, we are not aware of any access to any subsequent information pages within your account, including your flight history or payment card details."

"And, since it is a weekend, don't expect us to get onto it until Monday."

Hotel Wi-Fi not only hideously expensive – it's horribly insecure

Anybody not running through a VPN deserves what they get, bedbugs and all.

There is no security amongst thieves, including the hotel operators. I put my faith in a VPN on my laptop (Personal Internet Access) and on all my mobile devices. Now if PIA is hacked, I'm toast but perhaps not as burnt as some.

Spookception: US spied on Israel spying on US-Iran nuke talks

Re: Wall Street Journal links

And frequently there is no relevant content even if you've climbed over the paywall. Another Murdoch mouthpiece, altho there are still a few independent voices.

Speaking in Tech: Big Data and the ‘Everything In The Cloud’ obsession

Happy Birthday! Only 3?

I feel like you've been part of my life (well tech) for centuries.

Greedy web borg Facebook to SLURP news websites' golden nuggets

Facebuck is already blocked by multiple filters

All of my browsers (Chrome, Firefox, xxxIExxx) have filters to stop that leech from even knowing that I visit a page that has a "Like" button on it.

I refuse to do product/event sign-ups if I'm directed to a fb page. I'll phone or skip the product.

If TimeWarner, Sony, Disney, whoever want's to put their content in a fb garden compost pile, so be it. I'm not going there.

Premera healthcare: US govt security audit gave hacked biz thumbs up

Re: Lax US Security Rules????

Kaplow! You nailed it.

Our current government, especially congress, is totally uninterested in impeding the free flow of capitalism. Don't let regulations and audits get in the way. After all, we're encouraging the rest of the world to be as corrupt and capitalistic as we are (steal from the people, deliver to the crooks)!

Google and Obama: You’re too close for comfort

Re: I Block Them

I also try to block any site that interferes with my ability to open a page without that action being recorded by one or sometimes 100's of click-counters.

They are sneaky, however and employ some of the craftiest (like a fox) programmers. Things like "addthis.com" will inject tons of external monitors into your page. Hovering over a link for more than 0.2 seconds will record an "interest" in the content.

Google and fecalbook are well known for implanting images/JS/CSS into sites that won't function properly unless 3rd party resources are allowed.

Monetizing the eyeballs.

We need to get more regular joes to understand what is going on and how to prevent it - as much as possible.

Dear departed Internet Explorer, how I will miss you ... NOT

Re: Once upon a time...

More from the Wikipedia article:

Microsoft subsequently bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, and thus (making no direct revenues on IE) paid only the minimum quarterly fee. In 1997, Spyglass threatened Microsoft with a contractual audit, in response to which Microsoft settled for US$8 million.

and then:

On March 26, 2000, OpenTV bought out Spyglass in a stock swap worth $2.5 billion. The acquisition was completed July 24, 2000. In the deal, they received both Device Mosaic, an embedded web browser, and Prism, a content delivery and transformation system.

Not too bad an outcome.

NYPD cop in court for allegedly hacking into the FBI

Re: Surely they do this all the time...?

Totally - I agree. Reward the entrepreneurial lawyer-wannabee for inventiveness and exposing the weaknesses in the security apparatuses.

And the heads of the police department and FBI should roll!

Actually, that would sort of be like making Snowden the President of the World and jailing the rest of the imposters. Why not?

Mozilla peers into processes with student-built forensics probe

I wish Mozilla would spend some time for Firefox forensics

Like what tab is consuming so much CPU or memory.

Want to check out iOS 8.3? Apple just might let you (but make a backup)

Isn't that regressing a bit? WTF happened to "long file names"?

I think it's admirable that the Apple is trying on the old 8.3 MSDOS filenames. Might just want to get FAT too.

We've read all 400 pages of the FCC's baffling net neutrality rules – here's what YOU need to know

Just to echo earlier comments - catch a glance at pages 321- (dissenting opinion)

Talk about hacks.

(http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2015/03/12/fcc_net_neutrality_rules/)

Kaspersky claims to have found NSA's 'space station malware'

Re: Even better idea.

Maybe they should shift their monthly updates to Patch Wednesday (Tuesday's taken).

Going on holiday? Mexico wants your personal data

I'm liking this Dutch MEP Sophie In ’t Veld

She's shown up on the right side of privacy several times.

I've also learned not to tangle with the Dutch unless you want a long argument and a losing position.

Would YOU touch-type on this chunk-tastic keyboard?

Re: Not much use without

Maybe you have another unused spare appendage that could function as the "Ctrl-Alt-Del" key. I know mine needs some exercise once in a while.

White House taxes Silicon Valley to skill-up American workers

I think this could be a piece of a good idea but not enough

It won't help with the off-shoring of jobs which are performed outside of this country (US or any other country worried about the problem.)

I completely agree that a bunch of jobs don't require a traditional four-year degree to be an effective employee. However the HR departments generally aren't good at looking at real-life experience. Another recent posting talked about MOOC training and how HR was totally flummoxed figuring out how it applied.

Many countries are now operating as essentially "certification markets" where there is intense emphasis on gaining a technical certificate (Microsoft, Cisco, etc.) so the applicant compete on- or off-shore. Perhaps a bit more emphasis on being familiar with the language/idiom and customs of the hiring country might be helpful. Perhaps this is happening.now but it wasn't obvious 10 years ago.

Another recent story (on NPR?) was about undocumented immigrants from the US being shipped back to Mexico where they are manning call centers for US customers.

Aren't most of the problems here cause by having these artificial lines that delineate country boundaries? What is to be gained by restricting flow other than protectionism and nationalism?

Oi. APPLE fanboi! You with the $10k and pocket on fire! Fancy a WATCH?

Re: Who cares

@Joe 48 - Agreeing with you.

Slow day on the 'nets. There may be some type of CES or other show going on, but let's all talk about a non-functional piece of wearable tech.

Re: Hmm...$10,000...

I see that you said "so you can see the watch face."

Hang on a sec, there we go: "so the watch can see your face."

Re: Resale Value - not a lot

Pretty obvious that you didn't keep your original Apple-II for its resale value nowadays.

SugarCRM sews up sweet deal to buy out junior upstart Stitch

Thus goes the way of many "open source" goodies

Dangled out there for us developers/users who are enticed by the kimono wafting in the breeze, only to be brought back to the cold, cruel ground of "You want it, you gotta pay for it."

Now, I totally understand a bright individual/group wanting to get their wares exposed to as many Jills and Johns as possible. Open source it. Reap the benefits of the contributions from the open source world. Encapsulate those contributions back into the lusciousness of the main product.

Then, when us J&J's are hooked, require a pretty significant entry fee to get the next "fix".

It's sort of a rock-and-a-hard-place. Many of the other pure Open Source CRM packages have been bought out recently. I started an evaluation of possible alternatives to the ACT application of 8+ years ago and during my 4-6 month evaluation period, 2 of the OSS contenders had stopped supporting their products or had come under the wing of some commercial group.

Of course, SalesForce is always the one to beat. And, like Oracle, they will do whatever they can to beat, nay destroy, you.

The spy who leaked me: Ex-CIA boss Petraeus 'fesses up to blabbing intel to his mistress

How quickly the hornet-squad attacks

Just as a best practices note - you might want to be a bit more subtle to get your wisdom out there.

While not condoning any behavior outside of the proscribed (military officer, senior gov't official), I think that he should be shown the same compassion as other leakers of intelligence.

Unless you were born just a couple of years ago (and I can believe it based on your brilliant post), this type of shit has been going on well before this and prior administrations. Please post your past brilliance re Judith Miller or Libby the Scooter.

Personally, having been around more than your limited time, I can pull up hundreds of cases where leaks were made from within and without the administration. The only time they are prosecuted is when it serves the political purposes.

Snowden 'ready to return to US', claims lawyer

There is no benefit to Mr. Snowden in returning to the heart of the beast

Given the current administration's (and probably prior/future administrations) for slamming whistle-blowers, I totally expect that Mr. Snowden would, at best, be cubby-holed in yet another dark/dank space where his liberties were as close to absolute zero as possible.

I think he has done a huge amount of benefit to the the world in general and should be welcomed with open arms by most democracies. Unfortunately, most "democracies" are in name only and are controlled by bigger partners (US, UK, intelligence agencies, corporations.)

It used to be that the Scandinavian countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark) were some of the most open to dissent and accommodating of dissenters. I'm not a geographer, but I can see some nice direct routes from RU to any of these countries without crossing US-guarded no-fly zones.

What happened to make people like Assange into supposed criminals by the Swedes? Why aren't they offering safe harbour to Snowden? Could it be that the US had extended its tentacles deep within each of those countries' political system? Shame.

Cisco offers carriers adware-as-a-service for fun and profit

No, tell me it's not true! Cisco the protector of our networks?

Will no company not stoop so low to take advantage of its customers' privates?

I think the last vestiges of integrity have just been broken. Thank you Mr. NSA, GCHQ, et. al.!

Why should any company, any entity/agency/spy/cracker not want to follow in the paths of the greats? We're given great role models on how to treat customer/neighbor data like food for the hopper. I can't wait to get NSA-sponsered adverts on my ithing.

Just this evening there was a four-winged insect hovering outside my house slurping away on my wifi nectar.

$250K: That's what Lenovo earned to rat you out with Superfish

Heads will roll?

Doubt it. Doubt we'll ever know how some shitty software was peddled along with the normal bloat.

Offering McAfee AV as a cadeau? You have to be kidding me. Asking the lion to come in and clean up the mess the fox made in the hen house?

Sorta reminds me of those nice little Target/Gap offerings of "free credit reports for the next year" after you've lost all of your vitals to the whole nefarious world. And of course those "credit reporting agencies" are, once again, after your stash.

(Typed on my Thinkpad W701. Probably my last from this brand after buying 20-30 over the years.)

US court rubber-stamps dragnet metadata surveillance (again)

They (the secretive agencies whose names we are not allowed to whisper) are already several miles ahead in the race to circumvent the so-called FISA court (which was always nothing more than a PR stunt in the first place.)

I don't care what is revealed officially or through our wonderful whistle-blowers (KUDOs to you all!!!), the mammoth industry and its tentacles into governments will not go away. Maybe armeggedon (sp), maybe the 14th coming of X. No, lust for power and influence and money and black limousines is baked into their soles.

Net neutrality victory: FCC approves 'open internet' rules in 3-2 vote

Re: We Internet pioneers breathe a sigh of relief

Wisht I could vote you up and down. OK, I've been in IT for 49 years but it doesn't really give me enough ability to trash this decision and result in civil war.

The ability to intercept all communications is not going to stop because of some FCC decision. This in no way impacts the int agencies from putting taps on everything they can. They can listen to my morning movements all they want.

FCC Republicans slam brakes on net neutrality, but this wagon ain't slowing

I always expect a lot of noise from the Hill (flatulence, mainly)

Whenever an issue is brought up that the out-of-office (executive) party can latch on to.

I'll hazard a guess that 90% of these critters don't even know how to set up a router and get onto the tubes. Yeah, they have their minions who'll do it, and take dictation, and correct their spelling errors, and issue blandishments when the message wasn't on target.

How can they possibly understand the complex niceties of net neutrality when they need to spend 4+ hours begging for $s and the other posturing or ordering drinks?

All they know is that someone they don't like is in the White House.

Spacewalking NASA 'nauts hook up power and data cables to ISS Harmony module

Thank The FSM!

Am I the only one that needs to spend quite a bit of brain-power to decipher these asinine headlines? Of course, all wasted when I find out that Ms. Lohan wasn't featured in the re-entry position.

Maybe the headline writers are delving deeper into the body of the message? Perhaps they are luring us into an intimate read of the actual content?

Hellooo, NSA? The US State Department can't kick hackers out of its networks – report

You certainly weren't talking about that N. Security A. group were you?

Never heard of them. The ones that are supposed to be supplying "Security" to the U.S.of.A. No Such Agency when you need them...

Now the National Spying Agency. They're right down the road - BW parkway, hang a louie and wave at the $9.15/hour chap guarding the jewels.

'NSA, GCHQ-ransacked' SIM maker Gemalto takes a $500m stock hit

Typical western immediate ROI thinking from the "intelligence" bunch

I won't get too long winded here because there are so many facets to this appalling development. Well, almost as appalling as backdooring the firmware on most of the worlds HDDs.

The cowboys that are making these decisions don't really think about any long-term implications. It's a game to see who can come up with a more clever way of subverting protections. Sorry for the disrespect to real cow-people who do real work - the ones I'm talking about sit in plushy chairs in mini-mansions.

It's not about protecting national secrets or really about infiltrating foreign governments, it is about being clever and malicious. The same techniques are adapted by the other side, perhaps the axis-of-evil or the dark forces.

These cowboys (and I was one a few years ago) make 5-6 digit US$ salaries. They are far beyond the purview of law. Their bosses are in comfy corporate offices that are contracting to the 5-eye governments. The money that is spent by the taxpayers to fund this hedonistic group-fuck is incredible. But it is "black" and we'll probably never know how much was wasted on sorting through the dirty laundry and sewage that goes over the comm lines.

Snowden leaks LEGALISED GCHQ's 'illegal' dragnet spying, rules British tribunal

Damn, I need something between a thumbs-up and down for this comment

I'll grant you the thumbs-up one FWIW but life is nuanced.

Once data gets hoovered it never dies. I don't care how many T&C/Privacy statements we read and agree to, that data is going to be there way beyond our lifetime.

Also, don't forget, our "agencies" have great backups of everything. Need your hard disk restored? Send $99.99 to Box 666, Fort Meade, MD.

So, it's legal and non-stoppable to snort this stuff.

Can it be illegal to use it without court order (and public scrutiny)? That seems like the right path.

I'm only chiming in here

to be considered part of the currently alive crowd. Whatever currently means in your particular place in the quanta.

Isn't this how life/love proceeds? We never know, instant by instant, whether we're we're the cat's meow or turd.

Did NSA, GCHQ steal the secret key in YOUR phone SIM? It's LIKELY

And just to make sure everyone knows - IT'S RIGGED!

Sorry, didn't mean to shout.

Hold on to your teddies, make wishes to the stars, think nice thoughts about your leaders...

This is not a U.S.A. matter but worldwide. Along with someone (jest mebbe the NSA) planting rootkits in everyone's hard drives (and probably thumb and flash drives), we're all screwed.

Getting back to the OP, it really doesn't matter who you vote for. It has been written.

Superfish: Lenovo ditches adware, but that doesn't fix SSL megavuln – researcher

@Terje - and how are they supposed to do a clean install?

Consumer laptops don't get any media any more to rebuild the user partition.

There may be a vendor-supplied partition that contains the means to rebuild the original user partition, but why would I trust it?

Why would I trust some DVDs that were distributed by Lenovo (or any other vendor) since they can have the same malware.

Why would I trust a download from a web site linked to the vendor? Or to M$, or <younameit>?

In the end, it doesn't make any difference. The <conspiracy_agencies> has already modified your BIOS and your HDD firmware to do their bidding. I can imagine that these lower-level techniques are now promulgating outside of our <trusted_agencies>.

If anything, all these new stories about rootkits, zero-days, firmware diddling - all they do is open up channels for spying and PROVE that we are being spied upon - by whom? Probably by Many Eyes (Five + Israeli + Russian + ...)

Hoping for spy reforms? Jeb Bush, dangerously close to being the next US prez, backs the NSA

Re: I'd be more concerned about ... [than] this cretin getting into The Whitehouse.

And the operators of that machinery sit in Langley, Fort Meade, and strewed around the DC Beltway.

Oh, I left off the Saudis.

Torvalds turns to Sir Mix-A-Lot for Linux versioning debate

Tell him (Linus) to grow a couple

A couple more digits, that is.

Also I guess I didn't see the offending images. Perhaps a mental block in an older man or perhaps an adBlock.