Posts by Ed Blackshaw 627 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Aug 2007
AFAIK, replacing the hard-drive doesn't invalidate the warranty on the PS3, all you have to do is remove a cover, pull out the old drive and replace with a (standard) new one. Installing Linux definitely DOESN'T invalidate the warranty; Sony provide it as an option within the XMB software. I just fail to see the point in doing so on a games console, unless you are doing some seriously custom stuff that requires the cell chip...
On another note, I know several people who have PS3s, myself included, and none of those have failed. I suspect the failures due to the loading mechanism on the optical drives are largely down to foreign objects being inserted therein, the same probably applies to the Wii. I know one person with a 360. He is onto his fourth one now - two RRODs and a graphics failure. In the end, he gave up and bought a PS3.
No great suprises with the low failure rate for the Wii either. It is built on simpler and more established hardware - it does a lot less and would therefore be expected to fail less. What does surprice me somewhat is the failure rate of the PS3, I'd expected it to be lower.
Just out of curiosity; when whas the last time you saw a beige computer. The last one I can remember seeing had a pentium II in it. It's just a shame that such specious emotive crap should be spouted in the first comment on an article. That amazing Mac you are talking about is the same generic hardware you'd find in any 'beige box'. You know Apple don't make their own hardware any more, right?
Disclaimer - before anyone rants at me and accuses me of being some sort of Microsoft shill, I'd like to make it clear that I have no love for zealots from either the Redmond or Cupertino camps. Both are large, soulless corporations and as bad as each other. That's capitalism for you, so get over it.
I really really REALLY hope you don't ever do any work that involves databases and the web. SQL injection attacks are THE best known, and most common web vulnerability. In most cases, it is trivial to sanitise ones database inputs e.g. if parsing a parameterised string into a database as the contents of a field, replace all single quotes with escaped ones - of course this varies with database back end and there may be other things that need to be escaped. Any programmer worth their salt would already be doing so without even thinking about it, particularly since it is the sort of thing that tends to get stressed quite heavily on any university level comp-sci course, web security seminar, etc. Most modern web-based languages provide functions that will do this for you as part of the language (PHP and PERL are two that spring to mind), so there really is no excuse.
Personally, if I were running a web site that points to any sort of database (I'm not, but I do do a lot of database work, and the same principle applies to any front-end on a database), if a SQL injection vulnerability were discovered, the first thing I would do is to take the entire site down. The second thing would be to find the programmer responsible and re-educate them BOFH style.
In your contrived example, if someone had been hit and killed by a driver who was texting:
a) The driver would likely be found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, or at least of manslaughter*. The 'texting' bit would surely be superfluous.
b) If the police wanted to show that the driver had been sending a text message at the time of the accident, surely they would ask the mobile operator to provide timings of text messages sent/received at around the time of the accident.
c) If access to the driver's phone were required, and it were locked, what is to stop the police getting a warrant to require the driver to unlock said phone? IIRC, it is an offence for someone to not do so.
d) What evidence would you expect to ACTUALLY find on a locked phone to PROVE that a driver was texting at the time of an accident.
If you ask me (which, of course you didn't, but I am somewhat opinionated), the police should not have de facto access to any mobile phone they should happen to pick up. They should, however, have some means of accessing data on a mobile device which the courts have deemed may be pertinent to their needs to investigate a given case. In such a case, the police officers in question should apply to a judge for a warrant. If there is nobody who can actually access the data on the device, if for example, it has been locked by someone who has subsequently become a murder victim, then the phone manufacturer should aid them where possible. If the phone uses any decent sort of encryption for its data (as it should in this day and age), then tough shit; go and do some proper police work. See how it works? The last thing we should be doing is giving those with little or no oversight more freedom to observe and control the private data of those who have committed no crime.
*IANAL of course.
If the police have the need to identify the owner of a mobile phone, it can be uniquely identified by the operator by both the IMEI and SIM numbers. Since the operator has to keep financial records, they can almost certainly tell you who the handset belongs to (IMEI) and who the calls are being billed to (SIM)*. AFAIK, these can also be tracked from cell to cell by the operator to provide the police with approximate locations of the phone, assuming these records are kept for any amount of time. And I bet you they are.
*These fall down for pay-as-you-go phones of course, but that is another issue.
I can confirm that I have read that article and I am the fifth living person who has not read, nor has any intention of ever reading, a Dan Brown novel. From the excerpts given from the beginning of the book, it can quite clearly be seen that it is the sort of piffle that would hurt the brain of anyone adequately versed in the English language to be able to read anything more advanced than 'Heat' magazine. Call me a literary snob for saying so if you like, I'll respond by calling you a thicko.
You potentially only have 24 hours from first displaying symptoms to death, as pointed out by several people above. The lower end of this would apply to the young, elderly, and those who are already weakened by other conditions. In this, and I would imagine, most developed countries, if one person were to fall ill, or die from it, everyone they had been in contact with in the last week would most likley end up in hospital on IV antibiotics whether or not they displayed any symptoms. The reasons it killed so many in the dark ages were that mode of infection was not understood and that sanitation and antibiotics were not available. The fact that it is killing people today suggests that those falling ill form it are living in similiar conditions. Personally, I'd be much more concerned about being done in by some cock in an Audi who can't be bothered to check his blind spot before changing lanes without indicating.
This is an easily treatable bacterial infection which alsmot certainly has no resistance to any number of modern antibiotics. The reason that it is killing people in China is probably that they are Tibetans and they are living in squalor with no access to proper healthcare. The Han Chinese are probably not particulalry bothered by this.
I hate to poke holes in your argument and all, but actually most people in this country didn't even vote for our government once. IIRC, at the last election, they were voted for by circa 20% of the registered voters. The real problems are voter apathy and a lack of viable alternatives, what with Labour and the Tories being photocopies of each other, and the Lib Dems being unelectable. This is why we now have racists as MEPs.
... and it isn't roses. More like the product of the back end of a male bovine...
"Tiscali declined to comment on the individual case. "If a registered letter was not responded to then we apologise, this is certainly not typical," it said in a statement. "We take the security of our customer data very seriously and are compliant with all legal requirements for data protection.""
Given the trouble my girlfriend recently had when moving house and leaving Tiscali, I'd be likely to think that this sort of thing was, indeed, absolutely typical of them.
"Microsoft said it'll disclose all the Windows APIs that IE relies on in a "complete, accurate and timely manner" so rival browsers are not at a competitive disadvantage to Microsoft."
Why is it that I get the feeling that Microsoft have their own definitions for the words 'rely', 'complete', 'accurate', 'timely', 'competetive', and indeed 'disadvantage'? Oh, and 'all' as well.
For those bitching about storage problems, how about vandium flow batteries?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
These are a relatively new development, so still subject to improvements in materials and methods. However, they are still considered practical enough for one large-sacle pilot project to get the go-ahead in Australia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxley_Hill_Wind_Farm,_Tasmania
Apologies for wikinonsense - I did read about these in the 'reputable' media some time ago (New Scientist to be precise), but am at work and don't have the time to hunt down the references...
And you be fairly sure that at least the 2M machine and the building are insured, and that any uninsured costs might reasonably be recouped via legal action. The only question is, have those threatening to blow the building up been arrested yet? I'm pretty certain that that would result in nighttime visit by armed police in this country. Are our friends over the Channel less likely to take that course of action for some reason?
that is responsible for the design of the threatening letters sent by the TV Licensing people, so look forward to getting repeat junk mail through your post box telling you that you haven't got an ID card, so they'll be sending an 'Enforcement Officer' round really soon. You will receive these letters continuously whether or not you already have a valid ID card, and even if you don't actually own an ID. No wait, I've stretched that metaphor too far...
Having worked in the past with these particular failmonkeys, I fully expect a nauseating onslaught of whalesong-induced nonsense non-stop on my TV any time now. Of course the important question that nobody seems to be asking is: If the populous WANTS these cards, as a string of home secretaries has been intently telling us, then why do we need our taxes to be spent on telling us that we want them, and that they are good, which is allegedly what we already think? Another superb piece of New Labour double-think if you ask me.
I have to go now, there are some men here to take me off to 'the Ministry of Love'...
Although I'm not sure I should respond to someone WHO WRITES IN ALL CAPS, the obvious problem here is the use of a number as some sort of secret identifier in the first place. Here in the UK, we have a national insurance number, which is something similiar. Nobody in their right mind would think that knowing someone's NI number would mean that you are that person. The use of a SSN for this purpose beggars belief.
Also, as someone who holds two degrees in chemistry, I can assure you that if a person had the desire to make home-made explosives, they wouldn't have any trouble finding the information on the internet. They would, however, be likely to get caught either buying the materials, or testing their products.
Anyway, you seem to be under the false impression that security-through-obscurity works. If you bothered to do a little research before posting idiotic rantings then you would find myriad examples of how it fails.
I used to use AVG Free, but that seems to have gone the way of the bloatware over the past year. Now I use Avast! Antivirus on my home PC, also free. I would recommend it - it seems to have a smallish footprint and not require the constant attention that AVG now seems to need.
We use McAfee at work. It is a well known fact that we won't get much done on a Friday afternoon, when the weekly scan kicks off, and the best thing to do after turning your machine on in the morning, is to go and make a cup of tea...
...shorting them...
Seriously though, although this is indeed good news, it would seem likely that the reason that BT are dropping Phorm is because they are currenlty haemmoraging cash like ther'es no tomorrow. Note that they haven't said that they won't deploy 'Webwise' at some point in the future. If you examine the statement they have actually made:
"we don't have immediate plans to deploy Webwise today"
You can see that their weasel-words are remarkably free from content, due to the sly use of the qualifier, 'today'.
What would actually seem most likely is that BT are seeing their share prices drop to half of what they were a year ago, and have released a press statement in order to bolster them - which seems to be having the desired effect.
But then, maybe I'm just being a cynic?
"Roland on The Ropes - Jude Law beefs up in his role as the plucky rope climbing hero."
-Surely that would be a horror/slasher movie, what with the killer bats, followed by ghosts and later vampires. Come to think of it, it shouldn't have Jude Law - it should be Wesley 'Duane Dibley' Snipes...
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