* Posts by Keith T

617 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jan 2007

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Police probing ‘threats’ over Canadian internet privacy bill

Keith T

There are a lot of bills with backdoors for police.

There are a lot of bills with backdoors for police. The parts of the criminal code restricting firearms for example. Home made guns and fully automatic weapons are both prohibited.

Now I can see uniformed police being given permission for fully automatic weapons with prior permission from supervisors -- to me it is obvious that clause belongs.

But why the additional clauses for home made weapons and for fully automatic weapons *without* prior permission from supervisors?

Apple CEO defends fixes to suppliers' working conditions

Keith T

But the NY Times article had Apple insisting on overtime

But the NY Times article had Apple insisting on overtime, insisting that workers be kept in dorms so they could be woken up in the middle of the night to make changes.

The example they gave was of the last minute change of the iPhone screen to tempered glass where the new material arrived late at night and the workers had to be unexpectedly awakened to produce the initial phones by morning.

Malware devs embrace open-source

Keith T
FAIL

Where in god's name is law enforcement?

Where in god's name is law enforcement?

Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

Keith T

Story verified by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/pair-held-twitter-homeland-threat-mix-reports/story?id=15472918#.TydM7Pl0aAg

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released a statement in which the department confirmed that two people had been taken for "secondary interviews" and said that during those interviews, information was uncovered that "revealed both individuals were inadmissible to the United States." ""

Keith T
Big Brother

They don't get irony ...

They don't get irony ... and they're scared bully children.

Keith T
Big Brother

Pretty much gotta be a Yank to seriously mean it

These days pretty much gotta be a Yank to seriously mean it when you say you're off to another country to destroy it.

A preview of SOPA: Web shut down before my eyes

Keith T
Big Brother

His says his clients are mostly outside of the USA,

His says his clients are mostly outside of the USA, so why would he care if the USA blocked him?

Keith T
Big Brother

Hosting in the USA a bad idea with or without SOPA

If you host in the USA then US officials have easy access to your customer's data, your customers have no privacy.

And if you have some civil litigation, US courts are much more harsh on foreigners than US citizens, and it is not just customary, there are even regulations requiring this.

Unless you need to, because most of your traffic is US based, hosting in the USA is a bad idea.

Keith T
Big Brother

US freedoms? You can read about them in history books, but

US freedoms? You can read about them in history books, but sadly that is about it.

Keith T
Big Brother

He said his customers are outside the USA so is it not obvious?

He said his customers are outside the USA, so is the answer to your question not obvious?

He won't care if the US government blocks him.

And his customers can be assured that their data is not easily available to any US official who wants it.

Keith T
Big Brother

Test today: Which news media can you trust to report the facts?

Today the SOPA and PIPA protest will reveal to the public which news media distorts news when it has a conflict of interest. Are your favorite news sources goodies or a badies? Today we will find out.

Please read the links of the websites protesting SOPA and PIPA today to see what they are actually protesting.

Please then read what the network news media says the protest is about.

If you learn one thing one the internet today it will be the extent to which most major media companies, including network TV news and 24 hour news networks, and the print media organizations associated with them, cover-up, lie and distort when it suits their interests.

And hopefully you will also find which news media sources you can rely on for the truth.

Satnav mishap misery cure promised at confab

Keith T

Less Traffic In Rich Neighbourhoods, More in Poor Neighbourhoods

What we'll end up with is traffic routed according to local political interests, in other words traffic routed out of wealthy and politically connected neighbourhoods, and into poor neighbourhoods.

As well traffic will be routed the long way around past as many shops as possible.

Town councils do not have motorists interests at heart, they have local interests at heart. It is only obvious that they'll take unfair advantage of their new power over out-of-area drivers.

New Chinese space plans are all about security and strategy on Earth

Keith T

Worst case China follows the USA into bankruptcy driven by military spending

The good news is that if China goes further and fully follows the US lead into mega spending on an aggressive warrior culture it will follow the USA into bankruptcy.

I suspect the Chinese see that and will only go half way.

If they go half-way they'll overtake the USA anyways, because the US's military will be forced into cutbacks by the US civilian economy which is being killed by taxes to support imperialist aggression, and to support mega millionaire investment dealer hucksters.

Ron Paul is probably the USA's only hope.

Keith T

The French and Chinese are right to refuse to be vassal states

The French and Chinese are right to refuse to be vassal states to a vast aggressive war-mongering empire.

Shame on us (and David Cameron) for accepting the legacy Tony Blair gave us.

A simple HTML tag will crash 64-bit Windows 7

Keith T

Obvious solution is to copy Apple

The obvious solution is for MS to copy Apple, that will be the inevitable result of the blackhats (including the blackhats pretending to be whitehats).

MS copies Apple, only lets approved programs run on its machines, only lets approved programming tools be used, and levies users heavy fees (via vendors) for keeping them safe.

Is that really what the blackhats want? A world like Steve Jobs envisioned?

The other solution is one in which those who produce hacking tools are treated like those who conspire to commit burglary by law enforcement.

'Self-aware' bank account robbing code unleashed by hacker

Keith T

Locked up for years for consipiracy to steal

Locked up for years for consipiracy to steal. Even if he doesn't use the code himself, he has clearly conspired to support those who will.

*Assuming* his claims to have discovered something remotely original are true, and are not mere vanity, he has discovered a vital element that the other blackhats did not know, he has given them vital help.

And with no suggestion on how to close the hole, he published it openly for no purpose other than to help robbers and gain publicity for himself.

Even personal injury lawyers don't push people into traffic in order to gain clients -- computer security has the lowest professional ethics of any occupation, barring perhaps New Orleans police officer.

Keith T

It must be self aware, he's had arguments with it, and it has won many of those arguments

His code is "self aware". What a joke eh?

It is easy to vandalize something, if you don't have to worry about being caught and sent to prison.

Making something as vandal proof as possible, something that only a few dozen somewhat easily tracked people can break into, that is the intellectual challenge.

Keith T

Defect in bank website security is lack of police and justice system

The main defect in bank website security is a lack of police and courts to jail hackers for lengthy periods of time.

Never has bank security -- or any other security -- been absolute. Security has always depended on merely slowing an attacker down, while raising an alarm and giving police time to respond.

An standard 18" steel re-enforced bank vault has a heat detector, an explosion detector, but must be within 15 minutes travel time of a police station, because such a vault can be penetrated in less than 20 minutes with a thermic lance.

Even security-at-any-price objects like battle tanks and nuclear missile silos depend on guards and police forces to respond to attackers, and the courts to punish attackers. Detect those conspiring in the attacks and give them lengthy prison sentences.

There is no vandal proof security in the physical world without police and criminal justice.

There is no hacker proof security in the cyber world without police and criminal justice.

Seagate matches and raises WD disk warranty cuts

Keith T
Coat

SSDs are the way of the future. Seagate and WD are milking the last of a dying market.

Far more likely translation: Seagate needs to switch some warranty funding into shareholder profits, and figures it can do this by shafting its customers.

SSDs are the way of the future. Seagate and WD are milking the last of a dying market.

Yes, even with 1 year life expectancies their products easily outlast SSDs, but while SSDs are quickly improving, the warranty changes prove, HDDs are rapidly moving backwards.

WD slashes warranty periods on Blue and Green drives

Keith T
IT Angle

HP? Weren't they once in the computer business?

Maybe WD will go the way of HP and pretty much leave the computer industry.

IT? because I hope in a few years "What's the IT angle?" will be an appropriate question regarding Reg article on WD.

Keith T

Verbatium gives 7 year warranties

It is banal to observe that all drives eventually fail.

The point is some models fail during the expected life of the computer they are installed in, which is unacceptable.

Daily backups in companies do reduce recovery costs, but they that still leaves a couple of thousand dollars in lost productivity and additional overhead.

An intelligent executive would sack any IT manager he found buying hard drives with anything less than 5 year warranties. Thankfully there are not many intelligent executives around.

Verbatium gives 7 year warranties on the external drives they market.

Keith T
Megaphone

It is not at all refreshing

There is nothing refreshing if what they are doing what you claim, making defective drives on purpose in order to keep costs down.

Sure they are telling industry insiders, but the regular folks, my customers and yours, are going to get hammered by this.

For the sake of cutting $10 off the build costs our customers are going to be hit with $500, $1,000 costs in recovering data, reset up, and lost worker productivity.

Any vendor putting these drives in his product has got to expect to take a hit to his reputation and long term business success.

But in today's environment where shareholders only care about the next quarter, and to heck with employees and their silly career plans, I suppose it really doesn't matter.

Senators: Globo-domains could mean consumer chaos

Keith T

pepsi.softdrink, cadbury.chocolate

The point is the gTLD can be industry affiliated, and one company can grab the entire gTLD.

So anyone looking for chocolate and going to the .chocolate gTLD only sees cadbury.

I believe that is the angle.

Keith T
Coffee/keyboard

Simply have company registrars double as domain registrars

Why the insistence on making this difficult? Why not just do it the easy way? Maybe because there is money to be made in making it complicated and corrupt.

There is a simple solution:

1. Each national or state company registrar buys its own their own gTLD.

2. The registrar only grants names within its gTLD to registered company names.

For example, .uscorp could be run by the US registrar of company names.

Since its current duty include ensuring that registered company names are not easily confused, it could simply make sure that all .uscorp domains follow the name of the companies they represent.

The same can be done with trademarks and a .ustm

Company registrars of other national and state governments would have their own gTLDs.

Sure people can have other gTLDs, but users are going to know those are not tightly regulated. Consumers will look for the official domain name administered by a government agency with decades, even centuries, of experience in keeping names straight.

Punctured Google+ leaks bored users

Keith T

Allow anonymity

The only way Google+ will get any share of FB is if it finds a way to allow anonymity in public forum posting.

That really is my only complaint about Facebook, that so many news media sites want us to use our real names from Facebook when posting social comments.

Keith T

> That's why I use Google+ to sociallise with like-minded people

> that are smart enough to judge a system on it's features rathe

Then I'm surprised your post wasn't in Latin.

Keith T

signal to noise info actually very good in FB

You can easily filter out everyone but actual people you've actually "friended" (connected to) in FB.

We no longer get spammed by games or anything else.

You can even filter out people you've friended for political reasons so they don't see your stuff, and you don't see their stuff.

Keith T

Then you should hate Google+ more than FB using your logic

You're probably a bit out of date on FB's privacy settings, they've been reformed and enhanced a few times. They are certainly adequate for an IT professional to understand and configure, although I'm not sure about ALL of the general public.

"I know better", you should hate Google+ more using your logic because its intent is to share even more about you, including the search results you select.

FB does share a lot, not so much from itself, but from the websites it allows to connect to it, political comments and so on with your real name attached forever.

The way Google is headed, Google+ will be a far greater intrusion on privacy.

Keith T

It doesn't matter how superior Esperanto is, I'm sticking with English.

It doesn't matter how superior Esperanto is, I'm sticking with English because that is what the people I interact with use.

It doesn't matter how good Google+ is, almost all my friends and family are on Facebook.

Google+ is another MySpace, another Betamax.

India uncloaks new thorium nuke plants

Keith T

The Government of Canada simply lacks the independent ability to act that GE has.

Yes it is based on the CANDU (according to Wikipedia), but the Government of Canada and AECL did not participate in pushing the CANDU system to the next level.

Apparently we (Canada) didn't sell enough CANDUs to make the design profitable, and AECL being a crown corporation meant constant foreign policy headaches as the US government told our government who we could and could not sell to.

The Government of Canada simply lacks the independent ability to act that GE and other US-based corporations have.

Keith T
Thumb Up

"The Register Bump" now 522 signatures

In just 11 hours "The Register Bump" has the petition up to 522 signatures.

Now 523 signatures.

Let's boost the petition using Facebook, Twitter, email to friends, or whatever other medium you prefer.

If the name’s not on the whitelist it can’t come in

Keith T

@mechBgon: I use SRP #

Providing you are restricting by hash (or certificate (if you trust the certificate won't be stolen or borrowed), I think that is a good idea.

Restricting by path or zone won't work since an administrator could easily approve or install trojan infected approved software by mistake, and if an admin didn't, then an admin ID could.

That would mean turning off automatic updating and manually approving the updated and updating modules, or being sure to go around to all the computers and manually update them using an admin ID -- even at the busiest time of year.

You'd still have to be certain to keep your software up to date since I have no doubt some security researcher somewhere would find a way to subvert SRP, and then publish it openly to the blackhat hacker community. So defence in depth still must be maintained.

So SRP is something that organizations can do now, as opposed to waiting for the AV companies or MS to take further action.

Of course it won't work with developers or your external software test machines, but if your company doesn't develop code that doesn't matter.

Keith T
Windows

What about Apple? Openly publishing exploits pushing us to WLists.

The thing is, this is not such a new idea. It is not significantly more restrictive than what Apple does. And it works for them and their customers are very happy with it.

I'm no fan of Apple, but white-listing is obviously where we are being pushed by blackhat hackers, and by the security consultants who publish exploits openly for blackhats to read.

Keith T

An approved app is not the same as a white listed module

An approved application is not the same thing as having approved modules of code.

White listed code means restricting users to specific approved versions of modules, scripts, etc. that have specific hash keys.

For example, not FireFox 6 but FireFox 6.0.2 with only approved versions of approved plug-ins.

Properly it also means enforcing the restriction on all computers connected to the internal network, including those in tech support and programming.

Properly, development and testing computers would have to be on their own networks, with the corporate networked firewalled against them.

Keith T

Apple proves even most rigid white listing acceptable to home users

Apple has proven that even the most rigid white listing procedures are acceptable to most home users.

In general, home users seem perfectly happy to have the OS vendor control the coding techniques and charge a licensing fee, provided it means their computers will operate trouble free.

In general Apple fans seem perfectly happy with the requirement that running unapproved code means buying a second machine made by a different company perfectly acceptable.

Rather than home users being the issue, it is commercial companies with their own custom code that would require special accommodation.

Keith T

White list a good idea, easily added to existing tools

Existing anti-virus and OS installation monitoring tools could be updated to consult white lists.

Anything not whitelisted could be automatically sent off and made available to accredited AV companies.

Mozilla to Firefox users: Ditch crashtastic McAfee plugin

Keith T

Since McAfee blocked 2 days ago no Firefox crashes here

Since McAfee blocked 2 days ago no Firefox crashes here. So I think Mozilla nailed the cause of the problem.

Keith T

You're trolling GB, FF 3 wouldn't work on most web pages.

Silly.

Keith T

Yup, memory use much better.

Yup, memory use much better, and may well be totally fixed.

Keith T

but Joe, do you run McAfee?

Since the cause of the crashes was McAfee, only us FF users who also use McAfee would be affected.

Keith T

Did it crash FF or ask you to try again? McAfee crashed FF.

Without more information your question makes no sense.

Apple's ex-cop and the case of the lost iPhone 5

Keith T

Impersonating a police officer is a big felony in the USA

Impersonating a police officer is a big felony in the USA. If Apple is sending out people to do that it will be pretty serious, unless Apple has subverted the normal processes of the justice system in California.

Keith T

You're assuming the Apple representatives were honest and clearly identified themselves

And you are ignoring the effects of "apparent authority" that routinely make innocent people go so far as to admit they committed serious crimes.

"We're with the police, may we come in" a request, not a demand when spoken by a police officer, and a phrase easily usurped by someone who has hired police to accompany them.

And the Apple employee was an ex-cop. As someone with cops and ex-cops in his family I can tell you that tricking people into giving up their rights and how to get away with crimes is a common topic.

You can say it wouldn't happen to you, but when the day comes, likely you'll be intimidated into the wrong actions too.

UBS tells IT contractors: Take a 10% pay cut ... or 100%

Keith T

Cutting wages is the easiest way for managers to earn bonuses

Cutting the wages of underlings is the easiest way for managers to earn bonuses.

Times are tough, we need everyone to make sacrifices, following by an annual report indicating executive bonuses bumped up 50% due to increased profits.

Keith T

Do 10% less work while you focus on finding a new contract

24 hours to decide?

Two can play at being unfair, and being a Swiss banker is not a prerequisite.

Do 10% less work while you focus on upgrading your skills and finding a new contract

Couple can sue service that monitored their net sex

Keith T

Cellphone case rulings have said location data is confidential too

Cellphone case rulings have said location data is confidential too.

So if photos are ruled inadmissible and frivolous evidence, too private to legally collect from a stoeln device, expect future rulings that physical location data and IP address to be as well.

My suspicion is that this is a case of a well connected person abusing the legal process for their selfish ends, without regard to the precedents it will set in state law and US law.

Anonymity advocates have successfully worked to outlaw cyber serial numbers. I suspect one day physical serial numbers will be outlawed too.

Keith T

What police carry around is not evidence

The printouts police took with them on the investigation would not be admissible as evidence any-ways -- because access to them is not strictly controlled.

The actual evidence for the court is the original image files.

You retain the uncensored image files as evidence in court, but you give police officers the censored images to carry as evidence while looking for the criminal.

That is a police procedural error, not the fault of anyone else.

It would be terrible if this law suit succeeds because it opens up things like banning finger print scanners and so on.

Keith T
Childcatcher

Isn't contributing to juvenile delinquency a firing offense for teachers?

On what basis were the charges of receiving stolen merchandise dismissed? Having a b/f on the police force, being a fellow government employee, or what?

It is terrible that a teacher who received obviously stolen property from one of her students is still employed.

Isn't contributing to the juvenile delinquency of one of your students a firing offense for teachers in the USA?

Or is theft so widespread there it is no longer viewed as juvenile delinquency.

Oh, perfectly permissible for a teacher to buy a newish laptop for $60, with the serial number scraped off.

But big crime to track down the receiver of stolen merchandise.

Keith T

Location is not proof of possesion or use

Location is not proof of possession or use or knowledge of the existence of.

So there is a general legal need for webcam photos to prove the use, possession, and knowledge of the existence of the stolen merchandise.

(And generally you need more than the location of the PC more precisely than within 50 feet to even locate it.)

Kremlin green lights Siberia-Alaska tunnel

Keith T

Rail networks very important for freight here in North America

Yes we do. And they are well used. But they're almost exclusively used for freight.

The distances are too great for passenger travel. London to Berlin is about the same distance as the length of California or the width of Montana. Things are very spread out here.

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