* Posts by Daniel B.

3134 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2007

UK investigators finger emergency beacon for 787 Heathrow fire

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Wait

... they're disabling an emergency beacon? Really?

Given its function, it seems to be the kind of stuff you really want to have if the airplane ever crashes! Wouldn't it be better to fit a non-flamey version of the beacon instead of leaving the airplane beaconless?!?!

Hackers crippled HALF of world's financial exchanges - report

Daniel B.
Black Helicopters

I think it's already true

Isn't that what those HFT trading bots basically do? They game the market to both give them more profit *and* screw over the other trading bots. And they're prone to being 0wned by fake news, as seen with the fake news about Obama being shot at.

It's kinda like BattleBots, but instead of bots trying to trash each other, these ones are trying to bankrupt each other.

1953: How Quatermass switched Britons from TV royalty to TV sci-fi

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: The plot of this sounds suspiciously like that of 'Lifeforce'.

That particular movie was based on a novel called 'The Space Vampires'. But then the novel itself could be someone doing a Dracula and Quartermass crossover...

Submarine cable capacity doubled with flick of switch

Daniel B.
Boffin

So slow

Anyone remember the talk back in 2000-2001 about how the backbone networks & stuff had overbuilt and that we couldn't possibly use up all that bandwidth? All that dark fiber from telcos because it didn't have any use? I remember mentioning that the only reason they didn't really get used was because most of us were still stuck with dialup. And it seems I was proven right; as soon as broadband went ubiquitous, now all those "overcapacity" broadband stuff went saturated. And even now, I'm not sure if that dark fiber has been lit up, or if it remains dead in the water.

With these upgrades, we should be able to crank up backbone bandwidth worldwide, and telcos should stop trying to ram data caps against us...

Daniel B.
Happy

Re: Oh No!

With those phat pipes, practically all Asians are going to be LPBs!

Russian mobile operators say 'nyet!' to Apple, 'da!' to Samsung

Daniel B.

Different countries, different markets

Indeed. That's why I was surprised that the iPhone wasn't a flop, given that during the first 4 years I had seen only three iPhones on the wild, vs. everyone carrying Blackberries, then switching to Android handsets. Even now, Blackberry still has a decent standing; last year it was somewhere around 30%. Nokia smartphones used to be the most used, but thanks to the Elopocalypse that is no longer the case.

Ground control? My space helmet is FILLING WITH WATER!

Daniel B.
Alert

Good thing spacesuits don't recycle liquids

I'd rather not drink suspicious water if I were to have other fluids inside the suit...

Rap for rap chap in crap rap app flap: Jay-Z blasted by privacy bods

Daniel B.
Coat

Re: Best El Reg headline EVAR.

I still remember the subheader for this article.

Crab Shack mock cock cop attack shock. Tee-hee....

Daniel B.
Alert

The last paragraph

A sexting app that self-destructs the sent pics after being watched. Why is EPIC asking for a review of this app? Hopefully it is to ensure if the pics are truly destroyed. Such an app should be pretty popular given that teens have been charged with child porn charges and put on the Sex Offender Registry for sexting!

How the clammy claws of Novell NetWare were torn from today's networks

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Incredible..

I do know the meaning of ABEND, but I relate that more with mainframes than Novell.

Oh, I did manage a NetWare server & network ... and I was a teen back then! Stuck to NetWare 3, as upgrading to NetWare 4 was oh so very expensive! Even back then we knew that someone was eventually going to eat Novell's lunch, but back then we were thinking of Apple as System 7 already had file sharing for free. NT wasn't there yet, and OS/2 was ... ok, in some commercials. But I never got to see OS/2 in all its glory.

Malware-flingers do it back-to-front : scaM snaps, spans Macs

Daniel B.
Boffin

But then...

This means that the alert will show up before we actually execute the app. That is, the OS would show us the alert and we have to click Open to run it? (or nepO?)

If anyone gets a sdrawkcab message and clicks OK, they're asking for it. I'd be more worried on a trojan that wouldn't ask for permission...

Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer

Daniel B.

Phobos Lab

Dark. Scary. Even more as I was playing alone at my dad's home office, at night, in the dark. Having my dad suddenly appear behind the PC scared the shit out of me!

Daniel B.
Happy

Re: Descent @diodesign

Oh yes, I can't forget that game. I had the Mac version, which had a special CD soundtrack. Sadly, I lost that CD and the soundtrack's forever lost. :(

Yes, the maps were dizzytastic but hell, it was truly the first game that had 360 degree 3D. I'd think it would do wonders as an Ender's Game training sim: truly good Descent players understood that there's no up or down!

Daniel B.

Half-Life

Indeed, Unreal didn't really appeal to me, and IIRC it was buggy as hell when it came out. I already had Quake2 in my wish list, so I bought that instead. I did get to play Unreal at a friend's house, but we both agreed that it wasn't just there for us, and of course the multiplayer sucked.

Half-Life, however, was a much better experience. I didn't get to play it 'till 2000 though, and it was still an awesome game by then. Definitely kicked Unreal's socks, both in single player and multi. Hell, it spawned Counter-Strike which spun off into its own game! The other mod I've seen evolve into a full-blown game is Team Fortress.

Acer silences Thunderbolt

Daniel B.

Re: Acer

My last Acer laptop is a huge (dis)incentive for not buying another Acer lappy ever. And that was two years ago.

Daniel B.

Re: but mid/low end systems won't be able to cut it.

How can angry birds and jewel drop etc tax any remotely modern machine?

They're talking about real games, not the stuff you play while riding the subway.

TBH, I do like some of the casual games like Plants vs. Zombies, but the rumors of casual gaming displacing hardcore gaming are way too exaggerated. There's no way the Call of Battlefield Halo crowd are going to switch to Candy Crush for all their gaming needs.

US public sector shuns public clouds

Daniel B.
Holmes

Not surprised

Really, the US Government (or any country's government) shouldn't be trusting in any kind of private cloud solution and/or colocation. They have the money to host it themselves, and they should be hosting it themselves. It's their responsibility!

Linux 3.11 to be known as 'Linux for Workgroups'

Daniel B.
Boffin

Indeed!

Yes, basically the only "Windows" that was actually a full blown OS was Windows NT. The Win 3.x stuff was running on top of DOS, 3.11 ran over 6.22 which oddly was incompatible with 3.1 and 6.2 (I had the latter versions of Windows and DOS). Basically DOS and Win3.x had some patchwork to run 32-bit stuff, but the OS was still DOS. It extended as well into Win9x, but DOS 7.0 was hidden away from most users' eyes so few non-tech people noticed it. It also had everything pancaked with Win9x layered over Win3.x layered over DOS. You could even see which layer blew up by looking at the error windows/messages:

  • Win9x style window: Win9x layer.
  • Win3.x style window: Usually a GPF or some GDI error. It meant the error comes from the 3.x layer.
  • BSOD: You hit something really low level, probably on the DOS layer. The whole screen was in text-only, DOS format.

The jump in Win2000 and WinXP to the NT kernel did wonders for Windows.

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch 2013: Windows struggles in Boot Camp

Daniel B.

Re: Why would you want to use Windows 8 on a Macbook Air?

Also if it is so worthless why has the author of this article gone to the hassle of installing in on a Macbook?

You'll notice that the author installed Windows 7. The 8.1 preview was mostly to test if it could be installed as well, but the main test was on Windows 7.

Unmasked: Euro ISPs raided in downloads strangle probe

Daniel B.
FAIL

Re: wtf

not being funny here but they are the isp's own networks and right or wrong they can do what the fuck they like with them. Am I the only one that understands capitalism

But you don't understand peering agreements, it seems. Once you enter one, you're legally obligated by contract to honor whatever you agreed to. In peering agreements, it is to free-flow the packet deliveries.

Not sure what kind of tree hugging liberal world you think we all live in, it's all about money.

I smell a conservatard.

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Evidence

The raids are to gather evidence that the Cogent-to-enduser streams are being throttled, while the ISP-to-enduser streams aren't. If there's a significant difference, Cogent has a case.

Chinese police probe iPhone user's death by electrocution

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Ow.

One report said she was in the bath (steamy bathroom?).

That would make it less of a "dangerous charger used!" and more of a Darwin Awards winner.

Security bods boycott DEF CON over closed door for feds

Daniel B.

They've clarified they aren't banning feds.

In fact, they were asked about this stance by an actual Fed who mentioned he mostly goes on his dime and not in official status. So the clarification is aimed at these people as well.

Indeed, the DEFCON conference has usually been a nice neutral ground for hackers and Feds (insert your favorite three-letter agency here), and it will be quite different if absolutely no Feds are there!

Internet overlords deny Google's 'dotless' domains dream

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Oh please... this is a 10+ year old rehash of AOL era technology

Not quite that. In fact as the IETF and IAB dudes have pointed out, it won't work as advertised. DNS resolution can indeed search for TLDs ... but the first thing it'll do when presented with a dotless query is to search for $DOTLESS_FQDN.my.default.search.domain.com and return that if it finds it. If you really want to search for a TLD on DNS, the correct way to do this is by appending a dot on the search. So for http://search to work, you'd actually need to type http://search./ for it to work unambiguously!

AOL had its closed wall garden to implement keywords, the overall internet is not the same.

Analyst: Tests showing Intel smartphones beating ARM were rigged

Daniel B.
Holmes

Heh.

The whole benchmark looked fishy since it came out, so it is no big surprise that the benchmark had been gamed to favor Intel.

Please, keep that garbage arch out of our mobile devices, its already doing enough damage on the regular PC market, thank you very much.

Sysadmins: Everything they told you about backup WAS A LIE

Daniel B.
Boffin

Full and incremental backups

Usually you do a Full backup and then incremental ones during the week. That's why you don't have to backup Terabytes upon Terabytes of data. Of course, you should also have another team restoring said backups on the DR platform, which serves as both DR readiness and testing that the backup media is actually working.

Ah, the woes of a certain company that found out their backups were worthless the day their Server went down...

Swollen cloud could burst at any time, splatter us with FAIL – anxious tech biz

Daniel B.
Boffin

But that's the problem...

'Cloud' is in fact vague, and remains mostly a buzzword in IT. What is 'the Cloud'? VPS? Externally hosted webapps that do a mediocre job of emulating MS Office? Outsourcing email to Gmail? Just the 'Cloud Storage' part?

The thing is that everyone's pushing one thing or another as 'on the Cloud' and the concerns about security and reliability are pretty much valid. Some of the cloudy solutions are indeed good for the SME sector, as you get fat data pipes on your VPS for less $$$ than deploying the full solution on site. But dumping all the operational stuff on the cloud? That would be bad, as the SME doesn't have a fat internet pipe and needs to go to the cloud to get all their data.

So yes, the cloud has a place, but first you need to know what exactly do you want to put there, and do it responsibly.

Microsoft biz heads slash makes Ballmer look like dead STEVE JOBS

Daniel B.

They're trying to pull an Apple, it seems

By saying that they are 'listening' customer feedback, then ignoring it and doing what they wanted to anyway. That's why Metro is still there, annoying users in Win8.1.

But Apple had Jobs and the RDF, Microsoft not only lacks that but they're generally seen as the uncool guy. Even IBM can be seen as the cool guy these days, but that's because they changed a lot in the last 15 years or so.

Icahn offers to sweeten his Dell deal with warrants

Daniel B.
Thumb Down

Hopefully

Stockholders should be ignoring this bastard. Sure his offer is a no-brainer ... as in only those with no brains would want it.

Apple builds flagship store on top of PLAGUE HOSPITAL

Daniel B.

Etimologies

hehe. In Spanish, computers are female (La Computadora) though sometimes they have it as a male (El Computador). Spaniards have male sorting machines (El Ordenador), haven't seen them use that word as a female though.

(BTW, the 'sorting machine' variation was inherited from French, wonder what gender they use for ordinateur?)

'Clippy' coup felled by Microsoft twitterati

Daniel B.

Re: Fringe Case

Clippy was indeed useful, mostly to search or learn about features you didn't know Office had. Back in '97, this included the (sadly excised) option of saving versions of a Word document. You could have "version1", "version2" and current versions of your files in one place. And the animations triggered when you did certain activities (saving, sending email, printing) were funny.

What really made Clippy annoying was that the "HEEEY IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE WRITING A LETTER!!!" helpfulness couldn't be disabled; you either closed the whole agent away, or had it there ready to annoy you. Had MS put an option to have Clippy not intrude like it did, it might have had a better reception.

Daniel B.
Joke

He's alive!

I thought the BOFH's Alter Ego from Salmon Days had turned him into a bike or something...

Forget Snowden: What have we learned about the NSA?

Daniel B.
Facepalm

DEFCON

The DEFCON "ban" on Feds (they'll probably still go, but this time they won't be as welcome as on previous events) is particularly damning. Last year, the NSA Director actually went to DEFCON gave a keynote, something that was seen as positive by both the NSA and DEFCON organizers and attendees. It meant that finally the top spooks were seeing hackers as an asset instead of "pesky problems", which used to be the situation for past administrations.

But current revelations have made the very people that could really help the NSA uncomfortable. So while the "ban" on Feds doesn't mean they aren't going, it is a relevant message from the hacking community.

Microsoft waves goodbye to Small Business Server

Daniel B.

El Cheapo Windows Server

I remember once monkeying around with Windows Server 2003 SBS. Wasn't it mostly a cheap package with WS2003, with added Exchange and easier wizards for setting up stuff? It did seem to be nice if you had n00b IT folks who didn't know how to set up a full blown Windows Server, but I remember just going for the full WS2003 Standard edition. Of course, my employer back then had licenses for both products so the cost issue wasn't a problem.

Oh please, PLEASE bring back Xbox One's hated DRM - say Xbox loyalists

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Re: Already exists

Both companies already sell digital copy games on the current gen consoles: PS3 and XB360. Both have the non-transferable licenses, but at least you know what you're getting when you buy the online games.

XBone was forcing gamers to only have the stupid digital scheme. We already have the best of both worlds!

Daniel B.
Devil

hahaha

I'm split. One part of me wants this to be heard, because a DRM-riddled XBoxOne will sink faster than the HMS Victoria. On the other side, it sets a bad precedent in the gaming industry, something for which the consumer should have zero tolerance. The fact that 8000 people are asking to get reamed with this awful scheme proves that at least someone will buy into such an awful scheme.

HP admits to backdoors in storage products

Daniel B.
Coat

Re: Complex passwords?

I'm guessing it is more along the lines of "hewlettpackard" or "icarlyfiorina"

Iron Man 3.

Daniel B.
Boffin

They do it deliberately.

The tradition goes all the way back to The Net, where the third octet for the Praetorian's IP was wrong. Interestingly, a lot of what Angela Benett does is actual UNIX stuff, only shown more graphically (you can see output from whois, ps and other commands there.) They just added drama to what amounts to a traceroute+who+whois search. Given how much they actually researched on IT stuff, it is obvious it was deliberately made to not match a real IP.

One movie that did use a valid IP address but that can't be truly mapped in the public internet was Matrix Reloaded, with an IP in the 10/8 "private class A" block. But then that movie actually used a real exploit for that particular scene!

Other examples using obviously broken IPs would be Criminal Minds, CSI:NY among others...

'Priyanka' yanks your WhatsApp contact chain on Android mobes

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Old skool

Or doing the WinNuke thingy. All those Win9x boxes that would BSOD upon receiving a MSG_OOB packet, which made a good case for us to use Linux when telnetting or IRCing to hostile territories.

The interesting thing about WinNuke is that on LAN PCs it would only kill "the internet" (the interface would no longer have IP capabilities until reboot) but on dialup-connected PCs, the OOB packet would cause it to infinitely loop on BSODs and require a reboot. Had this happen to me a few times, before I blocked port 139, installed a patch and then for good measure added a port listener on the thing. Ironically, it was the only way to read the messages the 'h4><><0125' sent with said attack...

Sina's self-censorship scheme swamped with spam, not rumours

Daniel B.
Coat

Re: "Rumours...

You take the brown line. It crashes. You die.

Microsoft splurges on single sign ons with Active Directory update

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: The world turns @SecurityPedant

Oracle killed OID. It was one of those weird cases where Oracle actually checked out user feedback and installed base; they found out that OID was rarely used at all, while DSEE had the lion's share of the market. That's why they instead retooled OpenDS into Oracle Unified Directory. Source? Actual Oracle employees; in fact many former Sun and Oracle employees are in the IT Security market these days.

On DSEE, yes, I know Ludovic Poitou & friends are no longer at Oracle, but then there's OpenDJ which is OpenDS's fork, maintained by him. Personally I'd prefer OpenDJ, but the corporate world doesn't work like that.

Daniel B.
Facepalm

Re: The world turns

eDirectory was a fantastic product, but it had its flaws, as does Microsoft's AD. But if eDirectory was the vast superior solution, how come its use is in massive decline?

The one LDAP solution that I've seen installed more than AD, and used by the financial sector is Sun's DSEE. And yes, it actually outperforms AD everywhere, and it's used in the financial and telecoms sector. In fact, it is one of the Sun products that actually survived the Oracle acquisition because of this, and its offspring OpenDS was morphed into the Oracle Unified Directory.

IBM also has its own LDAP, and it basically has a shared market with DSEE, especially in places where IBM iron is running. While eDirectory has declined in usage, at least IBM's Tivoli Directory Server, ODSEE/OUD, 389 Directory Server and others have taken its place and are still used a lot. AD is actually the ugly duckling.

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: AD?

If you think AD crumbles in real world deployments you must be an intern that has yet to work in the "real world".

6 years experience, financial sector, worked for a certain bank that has a large presence in America (the continent). One particular system has 10+ million users, supports about 2000 concurrent users in peak hours and is managed by *two* LDAP servers. Real LDAP servers.

In comparison, a 700 user deployment requires no less than 11 AD Domain Controllers just to work, for another not-so-large organization. The same product that copes with the 2000 concurrent users in the other place, shits itself because of AD's weird behavior.

I'd like to note that most, if not all of the big financial institutions actively avoid the MS ecosystem. AD is used only for the in-company PCs, but the business stuff is using either LDAP, some Identity/Access Managment stack or RACF. AD is a joke among the application security market and is usually limited to only the MS stack and/or the Windows boxes in the company.

There are a LOT of admins out there with AD skills and CxO's are comfortable with the technology.

Betting on AD ended up killing our Production Environment for a couple of days at a former job. The CEO actually listened the "I told you so" crowd and are now switching platforms. They're not pleased with what they ended up getting with MS.

Daniel B.
Devil

AD?

So why would I want to choose the worst LDAPv3 implementation out there instead of a true LDAP or SSO implementation? Especially when AD crumbles under real world authentication requirements.

Google loses Latitude in Maps app shake-up

Daniel B.

Re: B0rked

I'm also miffed at Latitude's dissappearance. It is useful to find people, especially those asking for directions while driving. And as you, I won't ever join + and keep losing Google features every now and then.

Dead STEVE JOBS was a CROOK – judge

Daniel B.
Happy

Common sense prevails

So the judge accurately told off Apple that "but they did it first!" is not a valid defense to engage in illegal activities. Vigilantism is frowned upon by the law, and even if Apple's argument were to be correct, it would amount to corporate vigilantism.

As the judge noted, if Apple or the publishers thought that Amazon was engaging in anticompetitive practices, they should've sued through the proper channels. Indeed, "Dumping" is frowned upon and there are usually laws against this practice. But that's why you sue, not commit a worse offense by price-fixing, which has an immediate anti-consumer effect, as opposed to the medium to long-term effect that dumping has on consumers.

Apple surrenders in 'app store' trademark suit against Amazon

Daniel B.
Holmes

No shit, Sherlock

Apple's Huguet said that Apple chose to drop the case now because its App Store brand had grown strong enough to not require additional legal protections.

Given that the App Store only sells either OSX or iOS apps, and that you can only buy iOS apps on the App Store, I'd guess it never even needed said legal protections. Amazon's (or any other's) Appstore doesn't compete with the App(le) Store.

France's 'three strikes' anti-piracy law shot down

Daniel B.
Flame

Re: @ Daniel B. - Nice.

Ah yes. I have 2, maybe 3 DVDs that come with an unskippable version of the hideous "you wouldn't steal a car" ad. Yeech!

Daniel B.
Happy

Nice.

Bad on the tax hike, but at least they're taking out the retarded law to pasture. It's copyright which needs fixing; it was intended as a temporary grant similar to patents, but has been eternally extended thanks to Walt Disney's zealous protection of their stuff. Copyright terms should be scaled back to 56 years, no exceptions, worldwide.

And on battling piracy? How about not being asses to legal purchasers? DRM, stupid regional restrictions ... the more locks they put, the more people that resort to piracy.

Snowden: US and Israel did create Stuxnet attack code

Daniel B.

Proper date formats

2001-09-11 is the correct format.

ISO 8601 d00d!