They may cost me $15USD per month, but I'm keeping hold of my 5 IPv4 addresses!
Posts by Spaceman Spiff
193 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Feb 2015
North America down to its last ~130,000 IPv4 addresses
Ford recalls 433,000 cars: Software bug breaks engine off-switch
We read Hewlett Packard Enterprise's 316-page post-split blueprint so you don't have to
Apple's Swift creeps up dev language survey – but it's bad news for VB
Just what we needed, another farking programming language! In my (not so) humble opinion, these are simply devices to sell books - "Programming Swift For The Complete Idiot"... Then there's "Agile - Here's a Bucket - Stick Your Head in It!". C++99 - ok and useful. C++11 - GAH! C++14 - Double GAH! Shoot me now please!
Cash-strapped Chicago slaps CLOUD TAX on Netflix, Spotify etc users
Trump carded: Wannabe prez's hotels 'ground zero' in banking breach
Rosetta spots potholes IN SPAAACE: Someone call the galactic council
Small change to Medium takes large axe to passwords
One time pad?
Whoever wrote this article has no clue what a 1-time pad is! In such a situation (modern internet access), you need several factors. First is your actual password. Second is a server provided one time use key that you add to your password. This is still not bullet proof, but better than a single use password sent to your email account, or a normal password that can be hacked. I used such an approach in the 1990's to harden major manufacturing systems. The server would send a one-use salt value that the client would use to help encrypt the user's password. No two communications between the client and server would send the same encrypted text for the password. This is still used by major semiconductor, display, and disc drive manufacturing systems today, 20 years after it was developed. Bruce Schneier would probably tell me that it isn't particularly a strong encryption mechanism, but... :-)
Singapore netizens slap silks for copyright bullying
Verizon promised to wire up NYC with fiber... and failed miserably – audit
I stopped loving Verizon when I was living outside of Boston and they sold their FIOS cable TV service to Comcrap, who quickly removed all of the channels that I got the service for in the first place! I dropped the "cable" service and just opted for the Verizon phone and internet service that I had in the first place...
Top Eurocop: People are OK with us snooping on their phone calls
Sacré bleu! Parking machine labels French mayor ‘thieving bastard'
Microsoft: Here's what you'll cough up for Windows 10 next year
The time on Microsoft Azure will be: Different by a second, everywhere
Look before you leap!
I was dealing with this stuff over 30 years ago, and every time there was something like this, many systems (not mine, fortunately) had serious problems! It isn't the system time that is the problem. It is how applications are programmed to deal with these changes. They need to be designed to deal with these changes so that they continue to do the right thing. If a leap second issue requires a clock to fall back to midnight from 12:01, then applications that have critical events to process at midnight need to know that they already did them, and not do them again when the clock falls back, etc, etc. These are the extreme edge cases that catch a lot of programmers flat-footed.
White House forced to wade into Oracle vs Google Java bickerfest
A ruling that copyright applies to API's would not only bork Android, but most other software development as well when a perfectly legal operation of reverse engineering will become verboten due to copyright infringement. I don't know what the White House is thinking, but then, they probably aren't thinking through the ramifications of this ill-considered stance.
NSA bulk phone records slurp to end when law lapses next month – report
Unfortunately
Unfortunately, the NSA and its ilk don't give a darned about legality in collecting this data. They will do it anyway, and classify it "top secret" so no one gets to see it other than those in the agency. Until the NSA and GCHQ are disbanded in their entirety, this stuff will go on, and there is nothing we can do about it... :-(
HP looks set to ditch 3Com-spawn H3C Tech
Some zombies just refuse to die!
I sold 3-Com their first 100 IBM PC's back in the early 1980's in the Silicon Valley. That is where I met Bob Metcalfe and Howard Charney. When I was working in the Boston area in the 1990's I used to dine with Bob before our IEEE meetings. I doubt he has any financial interest in the 3-Com legacy now, but it is interesting how things roll out!
Verizon: fibre is MUCH cheaper than copper, we're going all-FTTP
What dren!
Wasn't that the point of Verizon's FIOS project? To eliminate copper (and the need to power the lines from big banks of batteries)? I got FIOS when it was first rolled out in the Boston area over 10 years ago, and it was great! Internet? Just plug your router into the ethernet plug in the wall. The phone line had its own UPS to handle times when there was a power brownout or blackout.
Then, they stopped deploying it - probably due to the capital costs. Now they want to do it again? One thing about Verizon is that like the weather (if you don't like it, wait 5 minutes), with Verizon if you don't like what they are doing, just wait 5 minutes. They will change their minds!
Please no non-consensual BACKDOOR SNIFFING, Mr Obama
Milking cow shot dead by police 'while trying to escape'
Robots.txt tells hackers the places you don't want them to look
Backwaters in rural England getting non-BT gigabit broadband
Citizens denied chance to vote in local-government IT cockup
FCC wants to know if carriers can grab some of YOUR WiFi signal
How Groucho Marx lost his voice and found his funny bone
Heroic Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse tighten their belts
Geneva boffins make light work of random numbers
Nice for theoretical work, but how many of us could afford such gear? Can you embed it in a laptop computer, or tablet? Probably not, at least yet. At this point, one of the better approaches in a practical sense is a lagged-Fibonacci RNG (see http://www.phy.ornl.gov/csep/CSEP/RN/NODE20.html#SECTION00070000000000000000 for details).
JP Morgan bank bod accused of flogging customer account info
SECRET PROTOTYPE iPAD 'stolen from RANDY Apple employee'
Give me POWER: How to keep working when the lights go out
Fondleslab deaths grounded ALL of American Airlines' 737s
Can you spell stupid?
It's spelled American Airlines. You simply DO NOT use consumer grade gear to run an airplane, even if it is just a glorified manual. They should have been using something like the Blackberry tablets. At least the OS (QNX) is basically unhackable. That doesn't say the software isn't at fault, but even if one application failed, the tablet wouldn't.
Oz media belatedly realises 'spook's charter' is bad (for) news
Looking for laxatives, miss? Shoppers stalked via smartphone Wi-Fi
The big boys made us do it: US used German spooks to snoop on EU defence industry
Licence to chill: Ex-CIA spyboss Petraeus gets probation for leaking US secrets to his mistress
Comcast 'flees $45bn monster-merger with Time Warner Cable'
Windows 10 Device Guard: Microsoft's effort to keep malware off PCs
Fukushima nuke plant owner told to upgrade from Windows XP
Time for a change?
Why should Tepco pay a gazillion $$ (or Yen) to Microsoft for another crappy operating system, and have to replace all of their computers as well (48,000 x $1500 USD == $72M USD not including software)? Switch to Linux, and continue using that old hardware until it dies. Switch to LibreOffice - it supports just about every language known to humankind and old MS formats as well. All of that, AND it is more secure!
Infosec bods can now sniff out the NSA's Quantum Insert hacks
If hypervisor is commodity, why is VMware still on top?
FBI alert: Get these motherf'king hackers off this motherf'king plane
Yeah, like most people would know when a hacker was hacking a plane's infrastructure? Get real! "Attendent, that man is writing software on his laptop! Maybe he is taking over the plane controls?" Give me a break! I write software on planes all the time. Most people have no clue what I am doing. Am I trying to hack the plane? Not likely. Usually I'm trying to solve a problem for a client or my company.