* Posts by Daniel B.

3134 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2007

Microsoft's NEW OS now runs on HALF of ALL desktop PCs

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Its not suprising..

Really, how many of the MS shills/apologists actually work in IT departments? Most, if not all of our large companies have pretty much banned Windows 8.x from their premises. When MS was strong-arming OEMs to sell only Win8 boxes, one of our clients cancelled all PC purchases. This client is a Fortune 500 company, by the way.

Sure, people might adapt, but it doesn't mean they will want to do so, and if the interface is strange they will be less productive. No, Win8 isn't like driving a manual/standard car, it's like driving a standard car that has the stick shift mounted on the ceiling, or a motorcycle with a stick shift instead of the foot gear shifter you usually have on a motorbike.

Snowden shoots back: 'So you DO have my emails, after all'

Daniel B.
Boffin

Heh.

But there's a catch with Snowden's claims. Where did he send those emails from?

If it was from Lavabit or another public webmail service, he's spot on with this proving that they are in fact snooping on everyone's emails.

However, if he sent it from his NSA organizational email system, there's a good chance the NSA is already storing a copy of every single email sent by anyone inside the NSA. Why? Because companies have this right, and I'm sure as hell the NSA has it as well. Especially for "national security", as someone might leak state secrets using email.

Oi, ebook price fixer. Yes, you, Apple – stop whinging and get your chequebook out

Daniel B.
Facepalm

It's the MFN clause!

it's hard to see how a company with a mere 10% market share of ebook sales at best was the dangerous one in breach of anti-trust regulations, while Amazon—who have over 90%—were not.

You're missing the whole picture. The "Amazon is the dominant player" card is what Apple tried to use to justify their actions. But in reality, they were involved in a price-fixing conspiracy that gave plausible deniability to both parties thanks to how the contracts were made. The key was in the following things:

Publishers were giving Apple the books under the "agency" model, which unlike the "wholesale" model the price per book is fixed by the publisher. Apple gets to set the percentage they keep, which they put at 30%. Up till here it seems to be OK, except:

Apple added a "Most Favoured Nation" clause. Publishers that sell to Apple can't offer lower prices to other vendors, like Amazon/Kindle. Thus this clause forces everyone else to a) switch to the agency model, even if they don't want, and b) sell at the price point that the publisher has fixed. Oh, but the publishers could just point and say "oh but Apple is selling them at that price and we can't offer 'em cheaper due to our MFN contract!". But the truth is that the e-book market as a whole had a massive price hike after Apple & Co. made their deal; it was getting so stupid that paper books ended up being cheaper in some cases! And that's why Apple lost; the price hike was so noticeable that it was successfully proven in court.

Google's driverless car: It'll just block our roads. It's the worst

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Go on green?

Is it just me, or is the 1 second delay after green light actually a real-life safety feature? Especially in big cities, where someone will run a red light. In fact, here in Mexico City there's already a 2 second delay between the red going on in one street to the green going on on the other one. And even then, it is still wise to wait because there's bound to be a jackass plowing through the intersection.

Oh, and now try doing that on a motorcycle. I've always waited a second or two, and I've seen at least twice an HGV hurtling down the intersection not giving two fucks about the red light. There's a particular intersection where red light runners are the norm, not the exception. I'm not about to gun the throttle just to get splattered all over the pavement!

IT'S ALIVE! ISEE-3 responding to commands

Daniel B.

Indeed

calling itself V'ger and looking for its creator.

TrueCrypt turmoil latest: Bruce Schneier reveals what he'll use instead

Daniel B.

Re: PGP

in Australia, Symantec WILL NOT SELL TO END USERS

Holy crap. I must admit that I haven't delved much into PGP licenses after Symantec's borging, but now I'm worried. Maybe the same thing applies to me? I'm in Mexico.

So it does seem I'm going to be stuck with FileVault2 or LUKS for the time being.

Daniel B.
Boffin

PGP

Looks like PGP is indeed going to be the solution for this. That's what I used before jumping to OSX. My license was stuck at the 10.x version, which seems to be no longer available for download so I'm screwed. I'll have to buy a new license if I want to use that.

Or, I simply open up my PGP volumes with my Windows VM and just make all new portable media devices as FileVault2 volumes. Sad, as I lose the "multi-OS" approach but lacking TrueCrypt, there isn't much I can do. I'll also stick to LUKS for Linux.

Daniel B.
Boffin

Are you sure? We have never been able to get truecript to work on any of our industrial computers OSs. Maybe you mean any WINDOWS OS.

Truecrypt works for Linux, OSX and Windows; the source code might even compile for other platforms though I've never checked that out. What industrial OS are you using?

TrueCrypt considered HARMFUL – downloads, website meddled to warn: 'It's not secure'

Daniel B.
Boffin

Hm...

Sounds fishy. Wonder what happened? I've been using FileVault2 ever since I switched to OSX, but TrueCrypt was my one true multi-platform crypto option. What should I use now?

Daniel B.

Re: Intriguing

The site goes out of its way to provide the information needed in order to move data away from truecrypt volumes, for all platforms - not just Windows.

It skims over Linux, just saying "use any integrated support for encryption". They did give the quick instructions for OSX though.

Google clamps down on rogue Chrome plugins and extensions

Daniel B.

Re: Is Google following in Apple's footsteps?

Flash, anything from Adobe and Java are all running via browser plugins, so technically this "development" affects all of them. I'm guessing those plugins will require NaCl.

Four-pronged ARM-based Mac rumor channels Rasputin

Daniel B.
Happy

ooooh

I'd love to see a non-x86 Mac in the near future, but I'd also like to see them perform better than the craptel stuff as well. It's about time someone brings back RISC on mainstream computers...

Watch: Kids slam Apple as 'BORING, the whole thing is BORING'

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Who taught these children ??

I think it depends on the kind of kid you're showing this stuff to. There will be kids interested in working on older stuff, probably just for the "how did they do this without current tech?" value. Maybe an Apple II isn't that good to spark that question on a kid, but I've seen it happen with mechanical stuff. That is, stuff like a mechanical calculator; that'll garner a lot of interest. "Wow, this thing can add, subtract, multiply and divide without using electricity? No microchips? Cool!!!"

An Apple II probably would garner more attention if you can show at least basic stuff working like "phonebook program" or something like that. I know my dad was able to make me get interested in his age-old TI-59 calculator as a kid.

Ask yourself, AT&T: Do you really want a Latin American adventure?

Daniel B.

Re: Government On Your Side?

Nuh-uh. The Mexican Government's current "edition" owes its ass to Televisa. In fact, DirecTV winded down its Mexico operations because SKY owned the market sometime around the turn of the 21st Century. Any attempt to barge into Televisa/TV Azteca's duopoly will fail miserably, mostly because Peña Nieto depends on those media moguls to prop up his government.

Daniel B.

Fact checking...

but then there remains Dish, already competing head-on with DirecTV in Mexico, but with no larger Latin America footprint.

Um… DirecTV hasn't operated in Mexico for at least 10 years, maybe longer. They lost out to SKY, which in Mexico is owned by our own evil media mogul: Televisa's Owner Emilio Azcarraga. That guy is basically the Mexican Rupert Murdoch… which makes SKY Mexico being owned by Azcarraga somewhat appropriate.

Spanish village of 'Kill the Jews' votes for rebrand

Daniel B.

Re: They have to get with the times

Unless you're talking about the Catholic far-right, which is the particular flavor you'll find in Spain. Those are also after Jews and Freemasons.

Daniel B.

PP

I'm guessing the votes against it are from PP supporters. After all, those still worship Francisco Franco, who was helped by That Famous Nazi Dictator during his rise to power: Remember Guernica.

Anyway, it does seem that the new name is actually the old name anyway, so it's more of a "St. Petersburg / Leningrad" thing instead of "Constantinople / Istanbul" issue.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? New leccy BMWs have flimsy password security – researcher

Daniel B.
Devil

PINs and Smartphones

If a user is mad enough not to have a [screen unlock] PIN on their device

Ah, haven't met many smartphone owners? A lot of them don't have any kind of password/PIN protection, and those who do still use the old 4-digit PIN standard. 10k attempts should be feasible!

Microsoft to release epic Xbox One update in June

Daniel B.
Trollface

Yes, it's time to switch

I'm pretty sure that MS has done too little, too late on the whole XB180 issue. By the time they started backtracking, the damage had been done. At this point, having your game as an XB1 exclusive is probably going to be a bad thing; maybe that's why Titanfall has also been released for the XB360. Hell, even the exclusives are having lackluster reception; Dead Rising 3 has sold 1.2 million copies after 4 months, while inFAMOUS Second Son sold 1 million in 9 days. Oh, want to compare it to a similar bestseller exclusive on the XB1? After a month, Titanfall sold 925k copies… and that includes PC and XB360 sales.

The XB1 isn't quite dying, but it's getting a lukewarm reception. People are either holding on to their PS3s and 360's or just buying PS4s.

Watch this: IPv4 must die! So let's beef up on IPv6

Daniel B.

We really should have larger IPv6 deployments by now...

Most of us are using OSes that already support IPv6. Client-side, the problem is nonexistent.

Most ISPs and backbone networks should have IPv6 support on their gear unless they haven't upgraded their stuff for longer than 5 years.

Then why the hell are we still lacking large-scale IPv6 deployments?

Wacky 'baccy making a hash of FBI infosec recruitment efforts

Daniel B.

Re: Option C

The problem here isn't about dudes going to their interview while stoned, but that the FBI restriction on hiring spans 3 years backwards. I don't know of any drug that has a 3 year lasting effect on your brain, though you might feel that long depending on the mind-altering drug...

Wolfenstein: The New Order ... BLAM-BLAM! That guard did Nazi that coming

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: PS4 best platform to play this on.

As much as I like the PS4, and as much as it is better in the tech department over the X-Bone … both consoles are basically rebadged PCs with mad GPU specs. I weeped when I found out that the next gen consoles were falling to the x86 dark side. I'm guessing the PC version has the appeal that most id games have: the ability to churn out mods.

Sadly, it seems that this one wasn't made by id Software but by someone else using the idTech engine. Still I'd like to check it out. Though I'll have to do so on PC, because my stepson has been glued to GTA5 Online and I can't get him to give up the PS3...

EBAY... You keep using that word 'ENCRYPTION' – it does not mean what you think it means

Daniel B.
Boffin

Ah, encryption and hashing

A lot of people, and a couple of places do not seem to know the difference between encrypting and hashing. I still remember someone talking about how their password database was very secure because they used "MD5 encryption" on all passwords. The usage of "secure", "MD5" and calling a hashing function as "encryption" almost caused an embolism on our security expert.

And then there are a lot of people who insist on using decryptable password encryption mechanisms for "password recovery" situations. Oh dear...

SAVE NET NEUTRALITY, urges Steve Wozniak in open letter to bigwigs

Daniel B.

Re: AKA LLU

There's a fun thing about the US: somethig akin to LLU was already in existence sometime around 2000, but a lazy version. A DSL line had to be served by three different companies by law; the telco, the ISP and... Can't remember what the other one did. Sometime during the last decade that changed, up to a point that your telco is your DSL ISP and you get no choice. The land of the free, and home of the guy who buys his way to a monopoly by filling the FCC's pockets!

WHOMP! There it is: IBM demos 154TB tape

Daniel B.

So I was spot on...

I missed the Sony article here, but I do remember some articles sprouting up about "Sony bringing back the cassette tape" and me going "lolwut? Sounds like a new LTO cartridge. Those have never died!" And it looks I was right.

I do wonder why tape mfgs love to tout "compressed" data capacities? I remember being bit by this when I was doing my backups on DDS4, only to find out that they didn't fit 40Gbs but 20Gbs unless you compress. Bzip2 was painfully slow on the processors I had on hand back then so I ended up using more DAT DDS4 tapes to speed up the process.

Microsoft throws Kinect under a bus, slashes Xbox One to $399

Daniel B.

Ummm nope

"Developers don't want to make games for the Kinnect."

I think its far to early to believe that. Kinect Sports is out soon for instance, and Dance Central is probably on it's way too.

Kinect Sports should've been out on release day, if the Kinect-as-a-main-feature hype is to be believed. After all, it was there from day one on the Wii, which is what both MS and Sony were copying when they made Kinect and the Move systems.

Dance Central is… probably not going to come. Harmonix hasn't announced much beyond "great plans for Rock Band and Dance Central", if they were serious about bringing Dance Central 4 to the XB180 they would've done so already. I'm so reminded of game franchises that never got sequels even when announced; I'm still waiting for that ObsCure sequel we were promised… noticeable that ObsCure 2 was a PS2 game. I wouldn't be surprised if the "next" Dance Central ends up being vaporware or indefinitely postponed.

Daniel B.
Meh

Meh.

I wanted MSFT's failure to be massive, and these changes are probably going to stop the Xbox FAIL boat from leaking. If only Sony hadn't made PS+ mandatory for online gaming, MSFT might've just given up on Gold-for-online-play as well. But at least it does show that mandatory Kinect, mandatory Gold for stuff you're already paying for is a no-no in the gaming market. And of course, the stupid secondhand-banning DRM as well.

I wonder if the Kinect-less XB1 will silently replace all the unsold ones gathering dust in the stores?

FCC mulls two-speed internet, axing net neutrality ... unless you convince it otherwise

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Let the Circus ... begin!

I don't think the Net Neutrality dudes are asking "same price for everyone and everyone gets the same shit". ISPs charge for bandwidth, they should either up their infrastructure to match what they're actually offering, jack up their prices to do the aforementioned upgrade, or simply lower their advertised data rate to match what they can actually serve.

As it stands, the ISPs want to double-dip everyone, increasing their profits without actually having to upgrade their infrastructure.

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: What bothers me most about all this

I do understand how the internet works. I also remember that a lot of backbone upgrades during the dot-com boom in the late 90's was said to be underused and a couple of telcos went bust for that. So technically, all those ISPs should just fire up that extra bandwidth and get more phat pipes for free. Instead, they're simply upping what they charge for and simply don't even upgrade their backhaul, then use "not enough pipes" as a reason to pull off this stupid tiered internet.

No, the ISPs aren't going to upgrade their backbone links unless they are forced to do so by regulation, and that's what the FCC should be doing. Not appeasing them with these stupid things!

James Bond producers sign on for Edward Snowden movie

Daniel B.

Snowden

I'd wonder if they're going down the James Bond route, the Jason Bourne one or (please no) the "Mr. Bean" err… "Johnny English" one.

Hopefully it'll be more Bourne-like.

Daniel B.
Boffin

They occasionally do get it right

One of the funny things about Swordfish is that at least some of the "techno babble" was accurate: 512-bit RSA can be cracked via quadratic sieve while 1024-bit still hasn't been cracked in a useful timeframe.

Other movies have at least tried to make some of the hacking plausible; Matrix Reloaded had Trinity use an ssh exploit, while Elysium had the Deus Ex Machina reboot/rewriting code written in some weird derivative of x86 assembly (and in true hacker fashion, segments of it are shown in shellcode).

I'm guessing it'll all fall down on which experts they're going to get, the real ones or the "Visual Basic GUI" dudes.

Charity: Ta for the free Win 8.1, Microsoft – we'll use it to install Win 7

Daniel B.

Re: Things are hidden :-(

Run --> cmd

ipconfig /all

Read "Physical Address" for the appropriate NIC.

That's exactly what he said he did. But you shouldn't need to do that if the info is also accessible from the Control Panel, and it isn't easy to relay these instructions to a regular user over the phone.

Supposedly secure Dogecoin service Dogevault goes offline

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Apparently it's hard to run a secure currency.

The difference is, cryptocurrencies allow you to be your own bank (well, except the loaning part) and not having to trust an untrustworthy third party.

Nope. You can be your own bank if you wish with "fiat" money, but you need to be really good in accounting. And doing a crypto currency bank, yes you can do it, and yes you can do loaning. The problem there is that it's going to be harder to collect unpaid debts.

Russia to suspend US GPS stations in tit-for-tat spat

Daniel B.

Re: Where have you been Murphy?!

My uncle Frank was a volunteer ambulance driver in Spain when Hitler was testing his new toys. Forgetting their sacrifice borders on criminal behavior.

Indeed. May I remind you that the US and the rest of the Allies gave Francisco Franco's regime a free pass? That's the same guy who asked the Third Reich for help, which was given in the form of said toy testing.

The Allied Victory, by the way, was also shared with the USSR, which pounced Nazi Germany from the East as well.

The ULTIMATE space geek accessory: Apollo 15's joystick up for sale

Daniel B.

Re: So many pins.

Why does a joystick need so many pins?

I'm guessing you've never seen the first gen joystick connectors? They had a lot of pins.

Slow IPv6 adoption is a GOOD THING as IETF plans privacy boost

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: NO WE DO NOT NEED NAT

But the RFC1918 addys were needed … for IPv4. IPv6 added the link-local and site-local addresses, in addition to the global-scope addys. You can, and should, use the local addys for most internal networks stuff, while the global ones are supposed to be used only for internet-bound traffic. Even Microsoft has got that right, with Windows stuff using link-local whenever possible.

I'm not quite sure why site-local was deprecated, because that was basically RFC1918 for IPv6. But something similar was drafted for private addresses anyway, so it isn't like the need isn't covered already.

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: SLAAC is the problem, not the solution

I remember a specific command I could use in Solaris 10 to set up my own preferred device ID when using SLAAC. Can't remember the exact command but it was something like

ifconfig en0 inet6 token ::1337:b00b:cafe/64

you had to put something akin to this on the hostname6 file for it to persist across reboots. The end result was that even using SLAAC you would get a "static" IPv6 addy with the added benefit of having all the IPv6 routing configured automatically.

Sadly, I haven't seen if this is possible on Linux.

Daniel B.
Boffin

NO WE DO NOT NEED NAT

NAT is an abomination in the world of IP and should be thrown away. It only exists because we were running out of IPv4 addys and needed a quick fix while IPv6 came out. Of course, IPv6 itself is now 15+ years late in being globally deployed so NAT has become a "given" everywhere. But it has damaged the network mindset of at least one IT generation, which now thinks that NAT is extra security. It isn't.

The reason most people think NAT adds security is because every NAT device is also running a firewall that blocks incoming requests as well. But the added "block by default" security can be implemented even without NAT. This myth should be put out to pasture and the real internet concept of "every node reachable in the net" should be reinstated. Sure, for all means you should have firewalls to block unwanted access to servers in the backend, and servers that don't need internet access should get only private IPv6 addys. But no more NAT voodoo tricks please!

Watch a bank-raiding ZeuS bot command post get owned in 60 seconds

Daniel B.

Re: Fantastic, now shut them down!

I remember some security firm taking over a botnet but they argued that telling the botnet to "self-destruct" or uninstall could cause unintended consequences in the infested PCs so they didn't do it. I'm guessing that it had more to do with "I don't want to get in trouble with the law" than actual problems.

Daniel B.
Boffin

Meh

If they're using RC4 they're doing it wrong. Not just because RC4 has been deemed possibly crackable or exploitable, but because they shouldn't be using symmetric crypto for these things. Oh well, better for us as it's going to be easier to shut down these things.

Security guru: You can't blame EDWARD SNOWDEN for making US clouds LOOK leaky

Daniel B.
Linux

Re: Well said that man.

Nokia the non-MS-Borged company might simply resume work on Harmattan and have that as an EU OS for mobile platforms. Or reacquire Symbian from Accenture. That would give the EU a non-US OS. And the rest of their operations? Simply base 'em off Linux.

Daniel B.
Black Helicopters

Of course Snowden didn't hurt

Anybody who could've had issues with the Snowden leak was already wary of US-based services thanks to the PATRIOT Act. And then there are the warantless SWIFT data grabs by the US, while SWIFT did side with the US on that issue, they subsequently moved all EU banking data and processing outside the US.

By the time Snowden leaked the NSA/PRISM thing, the possible clients had already been scared away.

HALF of London has outdated Wi-Fi security, says roving World of War, er, BIKER

Daniel B.

PKI

We theoretically could solve the issue with PKI, but even "type down this password on your device" is too much of a hassle for non-techies. Interestingly, the one place where I've seen PKI used for "public" WiFi access is at DEF CON, but then that's because you know most people going there are going to be tech savvy to boot. And the one thing that was made to do this easily (WPS) has the stupid PIN method which can be cracked easily, thus the method being disabled by anyone tech savvy these days...

Stephen Elop: I was RIGHT to BURN the PLATFORMS

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Re: What was the point of getting Lumia out in record time?

Downvoted for liking something.

Happens all the time. Though it's usually harsher when the "liked" thing is rarely liked by people who aren't shills, or are outright splitting the world into X and Y brand. See the iZombies that dismiss non-iZombies as either "Windows fans" (on PCs) or "Android fans" (on Smartphones). The OP explicitly said "down voted for not praising Android" … where are the other mobile OSen?

FCC seeks $48K fine from mobile phone-jamming driver

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Meanwhile...

Ray LaHood was proposing installing exactly the same kind of device on all cars. My argument against that back then seems to be the same reasoning behind this fine: blocking calls like that also blocks emergency calls, and that's a big no-no.

Trolls and victims watch Supremes for definition of meaningless patents

Daniel B.
Boffin

Patent purpose

The purpose of a patent is to protect an invention, allow a monopoly for a limited time in which the inventor can profit from his invention … and document the exact thing being patented so that anyone can build the invention themselves. During the patent's validity, anyone building the patented product has to pay the patent holder a fee, to be set by said patent holder. Once the patent expires, the invention is fully documented as to be useful to the rest of the world.

Vague patents are thus useless in this sense. They must be struck down.

Google's self-driving car breakthrough: Stop sign no longer a problem

Daniel B.
Terminator

Motorcycle blues

Ok it can see cyclists doing turn signals. But the real question is: how do they handle motorcycles? Lane sharing is legal in many jurisdictions, but has some restrictions in others. For example, here in Mexico City you can't lane-split unless traffic is stopped or moving veery slow according to the Greater Mexico City traffic rulebook. So a self-driving car should know that it should yield to a lane-splitting motorcycle if traffic starts rolling. It should also detect motorcycles quickly as to not swerve into/against a bike running on the adjacent lane; humans do that every now and then, I'd be scared shitless by robo-driver failing to detect me! Some automated toll booths already ban motorcycles because their sensors don't detect us; I've also read about "smart" street lights in the US that detect cars to pre-empt green lights but fail to detect motorcycles. Sorry, but I'm very skeptical on self-driving cars unless they're given dedicated lanes to run on.

Lost treasure of Atari REVEALED

Daniel B.

Re: Don't understand the fuss

I'd think that the ET dig is because it was the first time a game flopped so hard, the manufacturer had to do this dump. Then there's a certain curiosity to find the game that was so bad that it not only bombed, it brought down the whole video game industry into the Great Crash of 1983. To put it in more recent history, this would be as if Battlefield Earth had sent all Hollywood Studios into bankruptcy.

Then again, ET is probably 'buried evil' in this sense. Microsoft funded the expedition, maybe that's why their Xbox1 isn't selling?

Daniel B.

At least it did serve a purpose

It proved that the Atari ET cartridge dump was real. But it seems that part of the myth was indeed untrue, as the cartridges aren't crushed. Maybe they couldn't crush them all?

Daniel B.
Joke

Re: 2044

They'll probably add the Xbox1 there as well. And the now defunct LucasArts will probably want to bury their unsold copies of Star Wars Kinect as well...