Posts by Bronek Kozicki

Boffins bust web authentication with game consoles

console fanboys, sigh

It is not relevant which tool they used to break PKI. What matters is that SSL is no longer secure, as long as there are "bad" root certificates in your browser. We already know about DNS poisoning, SSL was the last defence.

this one is big

While collisions in MD5 are not exactly news, its practical application to break PKI is big news. And it can be repeated, as 200 game consoles is not that big expense. I really do hope that root certificates of those CA still using MD5 will be promptly removed from all the leading browsers.

Mattress maker can no longer spring for SAP roll-out

@AC 17:51 GMT

I am not suprised, SAP is representative of a large family of IT products designed by marketing for managers. Which should read "designed by the people who do not know a thing except how to sell things, for people who do not know a thing". It looks nice and marks all the checkboxes, which is a big win for those in need of updating CV.

Good news that shareholders started looking at the sticker. Perhaps the current downturn will do to dinosaurs of IT what a falling meteorite did to dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

Cowon iAudio S9 PMP

screen, support and competition

"The Cowon S9's screen genuinely advances the science of PMP screens" - iRiver Clix does not count as PMP, I suppose. It also employs active AMOLED and I assure the quality beats iTouch (and anything with LCD screen). And yes, image quality does not suffer from angle view, good to see it going mainstream.

Some iRiver devices, including Clix, also support Audible DRM (like all Apple players) which is nice; they also have firmware updates from time to time.

I must however agree that even pretty good PMP is not a replacement, not even competition, for a tiny computer with WiFi and quite a lot of programs to choose from.

Last major VHS supplier ejects from tape biz

@Danny Craig

Agree, Blu Ray movies are plainly too expensive to take off, although I do buy selected movies in this format, from time to time. Just as I buy other movies in DVD. It is sad that Blu Ray suffers from regionalization, as there are some good movies only released in the US (ICOS HD chip mod helps here, but it's expensive). Just like you, I do not see how digital downloads might compete with Blu Ray, given that typical monthly "allowance" we have from our ISPs are about the size of single Blu Ray disc. Not to mention download times exceeding 12 hours, when your typical household is 3 to 5 Mbps.

YouTube 'poisoned baby food' hoaxer pleads guilty

@hikaricore

I for one am quite happy with the line being drawn here. If someone made anonymous threats to life of your beloved, how would feel about his "right to free speach" ? The kind of media used is not relevant here at all.

Flash cells near shrinkage limit

@Popup

I think it's Multi Level Cell , i.e. memory call capable of storing more than one bit of information (e.g. four levels of electric current). There are no "multiple layers" in a flash cell.

I'll just go.

Unseen touchscreen Nokia leaked

but why ? ...

"But why couldn’t these enhancements - whatever they may be - have been shown off on an existing talker?"

Let me take a guess - because making these changes to an existing phone would cost the same or more as developing new one? After all, Nokia's phones are customised firmware running on standard hardware in a nice box.

Samsung pitches '15,000rpm HDD speed' SSD

yup, random writes are a problem

This is what gave Intel SSDs marketing impact - they managed to squeeze really good random writes from MLC silicon. But SLC write performance is quite decent by nature - is this Samsung drive MLC or SLC?

Group Test: Blu-ray Disc players

@Andrew Bush

There are two "levels" of unlocking Blu Ray device. Cheap software "hack" will give you ability to play DVDs from all 6 regions in a player, but it will remain locked to one of three Blu Ray region. Expensive chip "modding" (e.g. ICOS HD chip soldered in the device) will give you ability to play locked Blu Ray disks from all three regions (this is normally bundled with software hack to allow playing all DVD regions as well). For example compare prices and product description at http://www.mrmdvd.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=976 and http://www.mrmdvd.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=982

Forgot Panasonic DMP-BD35 ?

The only feature Panasonic DMP-BD35 player is missing, compared to DMP-BD55, is analog 7.1 output (but DMP-BD35 still delivers 7.1 in digital audio and HDMI socket), but the price is also £150 lower! This is a killer - as short internet search can confirm.

You should have also published some info on which players can be bought with ICOS HD chip mod (multiregion Blu Ray upgrade). Not everyone wants his player locked, given that some great movies are published in Blu Ray only in one region (e.g. try to find "The Lives Of Others" not locked to region A).

Forgot Panasonic DMP-BD35 ?

I wonder why .... could it be because it's price competitor to Sony S350 , but with better audio and video quality and much faster loading ?

Server virtualization ain't all that...

You forgot "Your comment" field in the form!

So here is my own comment - virtualisation, at least the sort we use (try to match with the form I filed minutes ago, heh) totaly fucks up clocks in virtual machines. This makes it unusable for production purposes. We depend on logs for production troubleshooting and timestamps must be accurate to tens of ms.

MacBook buyers bite Apple over copy protection cock-up

Finally

A market large enough for fake "compliant" HDCP adapters - now we only need vendor brave enough and the whole DRM content protection schema will tumble.

The madness of 'king cores

Few points

My machine at the moment is running 681 threads. Given this number I am quite sure the OS (or actually its core component called scheduler) could find good use for 80 cores, even given that 99% of these threads do nothing, most of the time. Of course, this won't improve performance, for the very simple reason that the whole thing will choke memory bus. Still, if I wanted to write massively parallel application, I would use intel threading blocks and look at parallelisation opportunities. It's not really that difficult, given right tools - and lets not forget that these tools are actually available for C++, which happens to be dominant system programming language.

Anyway, the whole thing is just a dream, unless we find a way to get memory bottleneck out of the way. Not likely in the next 5 years, I'd say, given how little progress has been made in memory latencies reduction. Oh, and 10 VMs per core (5 per thread)? Not in my dreams.

To sum it up : OS scheduler will find good use to any number of cores no matter whether single app needs them or not, but before vendors (Intel or any other) put many-cores CPUs on the market, they must solve memory bus problem. Builtin memory controller is just small, first step.

UK health records should not be flogged off

why?

I'd have nothing against researchers being able to contact me as a potential tester for cure for some rare disease I happen to have contracted. Of course assuming they know nothing about my identity, but why should they? The communication, at least initially, could still be made possibble through patient's GP. There is nothing difficult in replacing patients data with a number and allowing only GP to link the number with personal details. Unless of course NHS systems are designed by morons ... hey, wait ....

Asus launches 'world's fastest' smartphone

not really

"it’s disappointing to see that the maximum HSDPA 3G connection speed is just 3.6Mb/s" - why? In practice connection speed over HSDPA rarely exceeds 1Mbps, unless you happen to sit in a really good spot (in which case others will come along and 3G bandwidth will be shared out soon anyway)

Sun gives StarOffice ninth life

... or because ...

"Or you may find yourself paying for StarOffice simply because you don't know any better" - or because you just like paying for the software you use? It's not like $35 is more that few rounds in the pub.

Furore as Sony flunks gamers' LittleBigPlanet levels

two points

1. removal of user generated content which violates T&C is fair game to me. Users should be more careful to learn their rights before submitting the content.

2. allowing this content in the first place and removing it on later date is very unfair, as it gives appearance that Sony does not really care for its T&C and must resorts to informers to enforce it. They should not have provided the feature if they do not want to policy it themself.

Anyway, I'm not affected as I do not do any business with Sony, having learned about trojans they infected their music CDs with. Although it was long time ago, corporate culture do not change. I think those affected learned the same lesson.

Mine's the one with another corporation's logo on the back

Sony pitches blue-laser Compact Disc revival

SACD

it will have worse uptake than SACD, which at least is used for classical recordings.

SanDisk pitches 100x SSD speed boost tech

RAM?

I guess the "system" only works well with large cache, and the memory was not so cheap back in 2004 as it is now. Also, only since recently SSD is perceived as viable alternative to HDD.

Samsung shows off state-of-the-art 40in OLED TV

@TimM

"This does mean even a screensaver cannot be used, because that requires the OLED to be powered and eat into its lifespan."

You confused two things. OLEDs do have finite life time due to oxidation, and the way around it is by researching tighter membranes. OLED screens are powered off to extend battery life, because (opposite to LCD screens) OLED only draws power for lit pixels.

I am using AMOLED screen (Clix2), which is actual technology used for full-colour screens, more than a year now. Colours and contrast are absolutely briliant, no trace of fading, could be brighter though (it certainly does not have 200cd/m2, more like 20cd)

Carmack's rocket wins $350,000 in mock moon mission

I'm blown away

this was absolutely great.

Steve Jobs 'heart attack' citizen hack wasn't a short seller

The answer ...

... is simple. In stock markets it does not matter whether or not the story is credible. What matters is whether OTHERS will EVENTUALLY believe it. If sufficient percentage of readers believes it, stock value will go down, which means one has to sell it FAST in order not to lose the money, which in turn drives price down *without anyone believing the story* at the moment (yet or ever, that's irrelevant).

BMW unwraps electric Mini

So, what's the price of full charge?

... and how it compares to petrol version mini, per mile?

Oracle discharges monster bug fix

I guess they no longer call it

.... unbreakable ?

1980s Apricot reborn in noughties as netbook seller

... but they need to employ better designer

The unit looks so much like last century. I doubt many executives will want to carry this thing.

Cry havoc and let slip the SSD dogs of war

Makes perfect sense and I wish them luck!

but one has to wonder - how SSDs are attached to these ePCI cards? And are they user-replaceable at all?

Nasdaq threatens Overland with de-listing

I wonder how big parachute ...

How big golden parachute this guy, Chris Calisi, had received on exit, exactly?

I mean, I am perfectly capable of ruining any company, even if they do not pay that much.

Hospital staff use paper to wipe up NHS IT mess

I do not know why I read that ...

"The system went live in Java ". Of course, no one designing such a system would fall into a trap of frivolous GC use or design just for sake of design?

Venturi shows eight-motor electric sportster

nevertheless,

... it's beautiful

Dell Latitude E6400 14in business laptop

thinkpad brick?

Nothing new about this design, really.

The one with a brick in the pocket is mine.

Sony revamps e-book Reader with reading lamp

ok, next step in screen evolution is...

.... thin hinges. Thin, not thick.

DoS attack reveals (yet another) crack in net's core

@Oh policing like that won't work

You mentioned SSL "and beyond" - there is slight problem with encrypting, or even signing everything, and it is called CPU utilization. Client side can serve quite a few SSL connections, but server side - how many thousands connections before server is brought to its knees? Until SSL accelerators become "butter and bread" of web hosting business, this is not going to happen. Of course, cryptographic security on IP level and hardware accelerators embedded in lots and lots of IP ports might help, but this is not in sight either.

@Destroy All Monsters

You do not know what this vulnerability exactly is, do you? Because, you, know, IP6 is just a new version of the same old IP protocol, with some new features added, and (just) some old features taken away. It might, or might not be susceptible to the same family of attacts. Right now, we are in the dark.

What about IP6?

I long hoped that IP6 would replace IP4 and, with its security improvements, bring some of the exploits to stop. Of course, I might be wrong. But maybe, just maybe, IP6, being relatively "young" and not much popular (yet), even if vulnerable, might still be fixed - ie. certain features made optional or removed altogether, whilst reliance on them is not prelevant.

Nintendo introduces redesigned DS

@Andrew Bush

Grown up would buy OpenPandora and then use it to check email or news on the go, instead of gaming. Kids succumb to gaming, grown ups to email and news.

Apple ups the ante in Psystar battle

@Ed

"Why shouldn't a vendor decide what hardware it's software runs on? " - the answer is simple : support costs.

Nevertheless, when Apple moved to Intel and, in principle, to commodity PCs, they at the same time abaddoned the market they claim to have created ("Macintosh") which renders the claim invalid.

It about allowing legal access for other PC makers to the operating system Apple have created; or giving up some of its hardware sales in exchange for software sales.

It's Time that Google forgot

There is no way ...

... to tell precise and without guessing date of a story, unless such date was provided together with the story. And by story, I mean not only newspaper article, but also recent updates, fomatting changes, blog entries, comments underneath, etc. There is whole lot of stuff published in the form of HTML, and even more sent over HTTP (XML, images and the like). And very few, if any, of these protocols or formats cater for such a detail as "date published".

Apple condemns FileVaulters to seventh circle of Safari hell

FileVault should be banned in Norway!

for obvious reasons.

FCO owns up to energy waste

@Chris Byers

How do you access "On" button, when the machine is in the locked cabinet under user's desk? And why "locked cabinet" - as one can guess, it has something to do with security.

Alcatel-Lucent loses $1.5bn MP3 patent claim against MS

Good

Down the drain with bad patents!

Kentucky commandeers world's most popular gambling sites

I guess that's another proof

... that the DNS system with its centralized hierarchy is failure, because of its exposure to external pressure.

Woman sues EA over 'secret' Spore DRM

Sony?

So it seems like SecuROM was developed by Sony. One would think they learned the lesson about DRM. If they did, they are obviously misleading their customers (game vendors who use the technology on their own peril); if they did not ... what else will it take?

SpringSource VC investor takes COO role

don't you have better picture?

I mean, the picture of a sharp and focused wall behind blurred man is so distracting that I simply could not complete reading the story.

'You can't use Google' - EU Parliament

the next step

... is EC seizing control of all not expressly permited websites in the world (following example of US state judges).

EA in Spore DRM climbdown

the link to forums tells it all

"Never forget what's going on here today. You'll want to include that in your decision making should you chose to buy another product from EA and/or Maxis. "

Ah well. I hope in the future they do not release a game that I would really want.

BTW, because of similar attitude toward clients I turned away from Sony some time ago, and have not come to regret this decision yet.

Free from Philips, iRex launches A4 e-book reader

much too thick bezel

Why don't they lear from display manufacturers?

OpenSocial, OpenID, and Google Gears: Three technologies for history's dustbin

OpenID ?

I do not know about you guys, but I actually use it and have no issues whatsever. More importantly, I am fed up with separate logins everywhere. Really, really fed up; as a result I simply refuse to contribute to more sites than the few I already contribute to.

As to identity theft "bussinessmen", I understand that 1. OpenID is not meant for security critical applications (I would laugh in the face of bank trying to employ it) 2. The whole point why LDAP and others are not applicable is that the password is not seen nor transported by the site requesting user to be authenticated.

First Merc hybrid first to use laptop battery tech

when

... will it go in flames?