Posts by Dillon Pyron

Last.fm scrobbled for $280m

Viacom, CBS & Westinghourse

I bought CBS stock. Which was bought by Westinghouse. Which was bought by Viacom. Which sold Westinghouse. And then spun off CBS. So I own Viacom B (non voting) and CBS.

CafePress drops Buddha-snap doggie G-strings

Buddha pets a dog

I have a friend who looks a great deal like the Buddha. Perhaps I'll post a video to YouTube showing him petting my dogs.

US cities in Web 2.0 battle against graffiti

Taggers

A tagger was recently caught in our neighborhood. 16. His punishment? 6 months probated for two years, a $1000 fine and he had to clean all his work, a total of around 150 pieces.

The fool posted his work on his website, with addresses.

And now school's out. We are expecting our picnic tables to be dragged off into the woods (where teens will smoke a little weed and drink Keystone Light), our pool to have various things thrown into it (furniture, rocks, the occasional turd) and more tagging.

Most of these kids aren't "poor unfortunates" but rather upper middle class who do it because it's kewl and gives them status points. And they get more points for getting busted.

Pentagon: China threatens space and cyberspace

Don't forget 2001

Remember the spy plane incident in 2001? There was a concentrated DoS attack on many US institutions (but not the military) that originated from the PRC.

Oh yeah, the PLA is bigger than the United State total population.

GoDaddy now RegisterFly's daddy, says ICANN

Trademarks

I own the trademarks for my domain names. Therefore, I effectively (according to ICANN and court decisions) own my domains.

Phony BBB email dupes more than 1,400 execs

Congress critters?

Why target our lawmakers (Congress, MPs, etc)? They were looking for information of value, not the stuff that goes into laws. That's useless, even more so once it gets published.

Now lobbyists. I'd pay for that information.

Brit cuffed for German towel-torching raid

Europe?

And for some reason you think this behavior is strictly limited to Europeans? Americans do it all the time, I've seen Japanese do it in Hawai'i, all over the place.

The worst I've seen it was at the water parks at Disney World. The best is on cruise ships, where the deck attendants will pick up towels on the loungers if left unattended for more than about 15 minutes. And since you have to check your towels out, there's always a little pissing and moaning going on.

Pesticide link to Parkinson's disease

1.35 times

Do you know what that means? Of the roughly .05% of the population with Parkinson's, you were 1.35 times as likely to have developed it from pesticides as from other sources.

Statistics can be very miss leading.

Google Maps hits the streets

Google maps can't even find my house

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=6206+Oliver+Loving+Trail,+78749&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=30.737461,59.765625&ie=UTF8&ll=30.222217,-97.870009&spn=0.001022,0.001824&t=k&z=19&iwloc=addr&om=1

Go two houses to the left. The one with the green Civic in the driveway. The arrow is most closely pointing at the pool, 6201.

Judges define scope of McKinnon appeal

Extradition

Yet the UK would seek the same of a US citizen accused of hacking MoD computers.

I'm not sure where the $700K comes from and that will have to be proved in court. The facts are that he has admitted to doing it.

Online games turn British man into hero

Draw

I would have drawn on them. As would most of my co-workers and friends. But then again, I'm permitted to defend myself and others.

Google faces multiple privacy probes

Sold to the highest bidder

Do you really think your data is secure? All the Justice Dept has to do is go in with a subpoena and poof! How much would a data miner pay for your information? If eBay and PayPal can be cracked, how secure do you think Google is?

There's no such thing as absolute security. I do that for a living and tell my clients exactly that. I can tighten things up, but I can never keep the door from leaking.

Nokia says patent dispute hurts 3G

UK a basket case?

As if the US even had 3G. It's pretty much dead as a door nail here. Everybody is touting 2.5, but I have seen only a limited amount of 3G.

Any port in a storm: the display tech battle

VGA vs HD products

Let's see. I have to hook my laptop up to a 21" widescreen LCD monitor. 1280x1024 works fine. I have to hook it up to a projector. 800x600 is the limit.

My cable DVR has an HDMI output that isn't supported yet (but it does have an eSATA connection, and I have a 500GB eSATA drive. My DVD player has a HDMI output. But my TV only supports one HDMI input. And only provides 4 channels of audio out. So what are my options? The TV has three channels of YCbCr. Guess what I choose. And my A/V receiver has coax and optical digital input for audio.

Creationists open biblical history museum

This may be hard to believe

But half the people surveyed (in the US, of course), believe in either creationism or intelligent design!

As my anatomy prof said. "The appendix, now that's proof of intelligent design"

NASA says goodbye to love triangle astronaut

Bye bye

He will soon resign his commission or, if he has the time in, retire. His career in the Navy is essentially over. His efficiency rating is zero and after three misses at promotion he will experience "up or out".

Calif. firm sues Sony over the way it makes Blu-ray disks

IP holder

As an IP holder, I can say that if he disclosed the patentable material in any fashion prior to filing, he's screwed. Companies have teams of patent attorneys or review every paper for unpatented IP. My wife had a paper for a conference held up until she filed.

Developing a manufacturing process prior to filing is not prior art. Selling the product is. One can claim trade secret, but reverse engineering without the existence of an NDA is a valid defense. Without more details, I don't know who will prevail.

Forgent recently lost a case to Direct TV (and had the patent thrown out). Now they are being sued by TiVO. This patent troll could find itself in a tight situation. Their number one patent (JPEG) is about to run out. Their voice compression patent has been worked around and their voicemail patent has expired.

No charges for webcam suicide audience

Jump, jump, jump

This is just like the crowd on the sidewalk shouting jump to the guy on the ledge. I notice that the cops are cuffing them.

Bulldog fingers sacked employee for credit card scam

Gramm-Leach-Bililey

I'm concerned that many of the countries in which our financial data are now being moved to don't have the same protections as the US' GLBA (I'm sure the UK and EU have similar measures).

About 3 years ago, an Indian worker at a data processing call center stole personal information on about 20,000 people and sold it to a data miner. The only charge they could come up with was theft of company property, since he used one of their CD's.

Simon, not only is the door missing, but I don't see much of the barn.

Endemol in 'win a kidney' TV show rumpus

The queue

Isn't there a queue for kidneys? In the US, the only designated organ donation is a blood relative. Otherwise it's all about the national organ registry. As an EMT in a previous life, if we found an organ donation card, we kept "dead" people alive until we could get them to the hospital.

Proud to be an organ donor. And I give blood every 8 weeks.

My wife's cousin was a donor. He gave two lungs, a heart, two kidneys and a liver.

Oz Big Brother in dead dad ding-dong

Meanwhile in the US

Someone correct me if I'm wrong (I don't watch "reality TV"), but I don't think we've had BB here in a few years. Are American viewers somehow smarter than their Brit and Aussie counterparts? I thought not.

Son of Star Wars tests this weekend

re: ehm

"Does this mean the enemy just has to attack on a rainy day then?"

Nope, Alaska is where the target vehicle is launching from. Since the Russians have most of their missiles in Siberia, one would expect that they would only launch during the summer. Given the performance of the North Korean missile, I would expect them to launch from Iowa.

Home Office discusses thief-proof phones

Reporting back to the police?

Um, doesn't this also mean that the police can get ANY phone to report its position? So if they suspect you of possibly doing a crime in the future (hasn't el Reg already reported on this?), they can watch your every move (tie the mobile to surveillance cameras).

How far behind can the FBI be?

MySQL chief: being open source is not enough

Open? Closed?

Either you're open or you're closed. You have to adopt one model or the other. With the open source model you can still provide (and sell) support. Or let the community provide it. Which means you have to write effective code for a desirable product. With closed you have to provide support (free or paid) or nobody will buy your product. And the code can be as crappy as you wish. If it's desirable, people will buy it. If not, you've just pissed away a bunch of development and marketing expense.

I see both models running together long into the future. Each has its benefits and downsides. Microsoft isn't going to suddenly say "Vista is now open source, we'll just charge you for support". And it's too late for the Linux community to go closed. (Well, somebody could, but the rest of the world would work around them and they'd go tango uniform).

Brown dwarf cools its jets

Curvature of the earth

40 km is beyond the curvature of the earth. You'd have to do that in space. And how many of us can afford the $20M to do that? And I'd probably forget to drop by a European bank to pick up the coin on the way to the cosmodrome, so I'd have to do the whole thing all over again.

Mobile phone rays paralyse cars

Just like Mazda

Several years ago, Mazda had a problem with several of their models where if you inserted the wrong key (let's say you had two Mazdas), the car would be disabled. It took a tow to the dealership and a $100 charge to fix the problem. Eventually Mazda reimbursed the owners and published a TSB (not a recall) with a software fix.

I wonder if Lexus and Toyota are as vulnerable. Not that I'm going to test it until the dealership is open on Tuesday.

Attack of the terror casinos, volume 2

Nitril

Those shouldn't be latex, they should be nitril, just in case he's allergic to latex. Of course, it's not for your protection, if you're allergic to latex, "sorry about that".

Letting a futures market dictate public policy? Our public masters would never cede power to someone else.

Pascal, you have a wonderful idea that, like you say, will never happen. It would shut down Congress, Parliment and governments around the world.

Strange spoofing technique evades anti-phishing filters

Newsletter

Hmm, looks like I'll have to post another newsletter to my clients.

Dillon, CISSP

Brinkster.com battens down the hatches

Nonsense

Look up freescale.com. Are they in Austin or Phoenix? There are plenty more examples of that.

Dell goes direct into Wal-Mart's clutches

Hmmm

Either Dell is making some major profit on the Ubuntu boxes or they aren't paying much for Windows, vs. what you and I have to pay at our local dealer.

RAF builds massively multiplayer flight sims

ROVs in warfare

The F22 can already pull more Gs than the pilots. Of course, it'll be a long time before we have autonomous fighters.

But no airforce ever won a war. We'll still need ground pounders. And soldier robots are a long, LONG way off. They said WW III would be fought with tanks and anti-tank aircraft. Looks like it's being fought with privates and corporals.

Desperately seeking WLAN apps for London

Great ideas

I have a great idea. So great I'm going to patent it. But not until I leave my crappy job here in a couple of months.

And no, it's not software. Those are c*** patents. Except maybe I'll patent the bubble sort.

But give it to BT (there's no way a Yank is going to win 1000 quid)

Expel the IT bodgers, says Microsoft

CISSP

I hold a CISSP. Fat load of good that's done me. I know plenty of paper MCSEs and CCNAs, so certification doesn't imply qualification.

Fancy a nuclear power station in your backyard?

STNP

Well, the STNP (South Texas Nuclear Project) is looking at another reactor. Because it's an add on, they may be one of the first in the US. Austin gets a fraction of their power from the West Texas Wind Project and more from STNP. But most of our power comes from coal and gas. Austin being a very liberal city, the city council wants to "go green" and reduce our carbon footprint. Heck, the fire marshal drives an Insight and the city is funding research into plug-in hybrids.

Microsoft too busy to name Linux patents

Yes, software patents

Forgent just lost one its patents in court. Meanwhile, linked lists have been patented. I'd cite Knuth as prior art.

Elgato Turbo.264 H.264 encoder

In a few generations

In a few generations, imagine the horsepower behind the Turbo .264 version 3.

Apple moans over sex toy ad

RE: Passing off as Apple

"Apple would never make something that would make people feel orgasmic about their products."

Apple fans are always orgasmic when a new product comes out. The iPhone is current evidence of that.

UK arrest gives AllofMP3 touts the fear

Expensive CDs?

Who downloads an entire CD from iTunes? (or other sources) The whole idea is to get the one or two good tracks and ignore the drek. I'm punishing the record labels for putting out so much filler. Maybe if bands started publishing individual tracks of quality music and putting them out at regular intervals, instead of going into the studio for months and putting out a CD, I'd buy more tracks.

Sin City director to remake Barbarella

Keyboard!!!

Paris Hilton? I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Either you're a great jokester or you use some mighty fine drugs.

Paris Hilton - a skank who couldn't act her way out of a bag

Pamela Anderson - just a little too inflatable, and I question her acting ability

Angelina Jolile - she said she'll never do a topless, never mind nude (and you know this is going to require full nudity)

Jessica Alba - I'll need to IMDB her

Of course, I agree with others, except for Jane Fonda's intro, the movie stunk. I recently watched it on AMC (complete with appropriately place stars) and I'm not sure when I got up to have a beer and some chips & salsa and forgot to go back in the living room.

Antigua calls for pirates to return to Caribbean

So let them gamble

The US allows online gambling on US horse races. Let Antigua do the same. Of course they would also have to collect taxes on the winnings, remit those taxes to the IRS and report the income, just like they do in the States.

Online gambling is also a tax haven for US bettors. No body reports their winnings and you can bet that they don't self report. That's the real axe to grind.

BT, Sony to turn PSP into a phone

PSPhone

It looks like a solution in search of a problem. People (some people) say the iPhone is gimmicery. Well this PSPhone passes that up. Add video to the mix?

It used to be that people would say "I'm calling you from my car/the train/the game/the etc". Now it'll be "I'm calling you from my game console"

Next thing will be the Xbox 360 as a VoIP terminal. I give it about a year. With cordless extensions. It's all about convergence. Tony, keep track of this predicition. You heard it first on the Reg.

Pay-as-you-drive roads coming to the UK

And on the other side of the pond

Here in Austin there's been a flurry of toll road construction in the last year, with more on the way. There was a rebellion when several roads already paid for with tax dollars were proposed to be changed to toll roads.

So I pay $1.25 each way for a 6.6 mile stretch of road. I drive 80+ and am consistently passed by BMWs and Mercedes (when I see another car). The toll road authority had predicted thousands of cars per day, but from what I've seen, that's just not happening.

My Civic weighs 2800 pounds and gets 33 mpg. That means that my effective gas tax is $6.25 a gallon. A Hummer weighs 6000 pounds and get 15 mpg. His effective gas tax is around $3 a gallon, yet he does four times the damage to the road.

Raise my gas tax by $.50 a gallon. I'm paying $3.00 a gallon right now, $3.50 is nothing. And the toll only pays for those 6.6 miles, a gas tax pays for all the roads. And that Hummer will pay twice as much as I do. I'm a frugal liver. I'll pay cash for my next car (either another Civic or maybe a Fit). Let those Hummer drivers suffer with the payments on their $60,000 trucks and those gas payments. Maybe it'll cut back on their driving.

I used to home office. That was the ultimate fuel saver.

Google's search dominance continues to grow

Goodsearch

If you're in the US, use Goodsearch instead. Yeah, they use Yahoo, but you get money for your favorite charity. And if you don't have one, try Corgiaid :-)

Dillon, VP of Corgiaid, a 501(c)3

Symbian signing is no protection from spyware

Symbian signed?

Symbian signed, but not by Symbian? Much as I dislike MS, at least when you get a signed driver, you know it's been vetted by MS. I would have thought the same would apply to Symbian. Looks like I'm sticking with my Moto V551 for a while longer.

Must invest in F-Secure and others developing security products for smart phones, that seems to be "the next big thing".

Dillon in Tejas, who has more compute power in his office than some third world countries.

Google pulls essay adverts

A tacit admission

Wilson concluded by noting the ban would not prevent Google from generating links to "rogue essay selling companies, which have been accused of scamming customers by providing poor quality material"

So basically he's admitting that his customers are using his "quality" for the same purposes that the poor quality material is used for.

That's like the internet pharmacies selling oxycontin and then saying "but I didn't know people would use them to get high"

The Register takes the stand at Interop

Blackhat & DEFCON

But my Vegas trip is for Blackhat and DEFCON!!!!

I'll be wearing my Reg hat to the USGP, want a picture?

Crypto boffin: writing is on the wall for 1024-bit RSA

Things will change

Things will change. As soon as Wells Fargo or Fidelity or some other large financial institution gets majorlly comprimised. I know of a 128 node Beowulf cluster (in someone's spare bedroom) that's running SETI at home. How hard would it be for a dedicated criminal to set one up?

Royal Marine helmet-cam auteur hit during Afghan gunfight

Same here

No imagery here at a major computer manufacturer located in Texas. Our firewall and proxies block a lot more than pr0n. YouTube, all the mail servers, etc.

Greek cops to paintball rioting fans

Pepper spray

Chris, my wife carries a pepper spray (actually, a foam) that also marks the perp with a pretty indelible ink.

I can just imagine the line up at the police station. Six men of almost identical height, weight, general physical condition, one with a purple face. That should stand up in court.

University moves to hush Facebook criticism

Google is an employer's friend

Many prospective employers are now Googling applicants. Perhaps students should keep that little factoid in mind.

I know I Google mine.