Posts by David Edwards

Teams title

Did anyone see that this is hosted by the appropriately named "British army web exploitation team"!

Wifi....like the internet only less secure

These days I am increasingly worried about rogue wireless hotspots. No way id use any wifi point for anything as its so easy to set one up an go slurping. Maybe we need certificates like Verisign for wifi that Joe Public can grasp.

Headline first.....analysis......errr....

As mentioned by an @AC popularity may well be the cause. I just looked at the about page on 1-1 internet and you can see that they host a MASSIVE proportion of EU sites (ok they may have omitted some other players in their stats).

No one reading this with any valid concept of cyber crime will be thinking that the crims are hosting botnets on servers that Mr.Criminal has paid for, so they are merely finding vulnerable sites to host them on.

I see a growing trend in bloggers (even so called respected ones) to point out bad, with little context or analysis.

Beeps have a downside

If you drop your keys in a car park, its then very easy for anyone dodgy to find said car by pressing the button and listening/watching for lights etc.

If I were to design a secure system it would not have obvious arm/disarm indication. Same reason its not the best idea to have the make of car on the keyfob. Maybe so cars have this?

PDA Re invented

So a smart phone without a phone is now a Tablet. Wernt these PDA a few years ago? Is the Plam 5x in my desk draw an early "tablet"?. Is an IPod a Tablet? How good or Bad do the AV functions have to be for it to be a PMP.

BTW. The first A4 size device that you can write on with a "pen", will be the one that I go for provided it runs Evernote (or very similar)

Escalate Priv's to move Apps

As a recent MAC user I was surprised to have to enter my password every time I moved some of the apple pre installed apps like Garrage band, into a different fodler.

You only have to get this kind of thing every now and again to become blase about entering it (I know I did, I know its bad, I am ashamed)

Just Like with rogue android apps where users diddnt ask "Why does this wall paper App need access to my phonebook"

Simply saying ARE YOU SURE, does not equal secuirty.

Reporting angle/Headlines

I have seen a few headlines on the net about this and finally got round to reading the story. So why was I surprised that he was arrested for having a stolen voting machine in his possession (Stolen becuase they are Govt property and they diddnt saction the release, or have very strong reason to suspect thats the case)?

Exposing vulnarabilities on websites is one thing, knicking kit to expose vulnerabillities is aosmething else (dont be surprised if you get nicked!)

Site security Status

Active (Secret)

Inactive (Secret just in case)

Old (Nobody cares)

Historic (Ok, lets have a think about it)

Most sites go through this for farily obvious reasons. Views/restaurants aside looking at old comms kit is a fairly limited market and takes some thought to make interesting for many, however I have been to the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and its really really good, wife and kid were not bored as there was a lot to play with.

There as something on TV about the tower with chris Barrie recently, most of the kit was still in place, quite fascinating looking at all the hardware required to do its job.

Successfull Walled Garden ?

Games consoles.

As far as I know, mass adoption of a programmable device by "consumers" and no malware/viruses?

Discuss.

(Becuase they dont hold anything of any value maybe)

Homer Simpsons Car Design

Classic Episode, Homer meets brother who owns car company. Brother listens to Homer as voice of working man and allows him to design a car.

Capacity Planning on Open Data

Its a headache, if live data is open to all without any registration etc trying to do any meaningful capacity planning is a nightmare. Simply saying the government should respond is demonstrating a lack of understanding.

How are they expected to estimate capacity

Should they just keep adding as usage goes up

Do they just cough up for capacity costs and assume its "for the good of the public"

How do they know if an app/site is to be launched with huge fanfare etc.

How do you account for badly written code that hammers the service unnecessarily

How do you cope with DOS type issues

Possibly ie suggest some form of threshold based scheme, anything over X requests per day/hour/min whatever requires registration including capacity estimate (and they get better service e.g. emails re downtime, advice on new facilities, request to add data etc). Unregistered requests over that threshold could be blocked or throttled. (that assumes they can detect it e.g. from a server hosting the mash up, not the client)

The actual Answer (if he'd looked)

The COI report contains a the breakdown of the spend of the £35m site (business link)

in 000s

£6250 Strategy and Planning

£4388 Design and Build

£4661 Hositng and Infrastructure

£15229 Content Provision

£4472 Testing and Evaluation

All huge figures ill agree, but trying to flog an open source produce wont solve very much of those costs will it (im assuming the tool doesn't write content for you)

If I had my most cynical hat on, id say its just this sort of badly formulated research and "product X is the answer" approach that leads projects to go wrong in the first place.

Admin Fatigue

Having been playign with Mac OSX for a few weeks now I can see some flaws in the secure Admin issue. I have tried a lot of software and LOTS requires me to logon as Admin to install it (LOTS), including such trivial things as moving the Apple installed Apps from one folder to another.

This means that users soon trpe the Admin password whenerver asked wihtout thinking, so ends up being self defeating due to bad programmin/install practice. Maybe I am missing something as iv only had the mac a month or so, but so far I see opportunites for error.

Also anyone without a virus scanner on their Mac is a plonker in my Mind, if nothg else it lets me keep an eye on email trojans etc that could come in and get recirculated around the Win users I deal with.

Price of paper mags?

Hang on, arent most paper Mags over £3.50 month these days. I have once computer mag on my desk that was £6 (with crap cover disk, not buying again). I dont think there will be much consumer difference in term of price sensitivity between paper and Tablet especially if there is good multimedia content (INCLUDING ADS)

Define "lone"

Its not being without other humans, its being without a colleague.

A big market for this is the social services type roles where its not being alone thats the problem, its being in close proximity to less-than-safe-other-people.

Keep Checking on o2 ???

Or you can click the send me info button and get informed via email.

(Supposing of course that they bother sending emails)

Wrong sort of strike?

You see, in the 70's british strike usually meant something totally different.

hardware v software v vapourwre

Too much talk about what it does today, launch day. The iPad does and will do what ever people write software for it to do. Give or take a USB port or button 2 the "new" tablet form factor jobbies will live or die based on the SOFTWARE they run, right now the iPAD is too new for many Dev to get their heads around and have delivered much (although first looks are promising e.g Evernote).

Apple have a device, imperfect though it is, that you can buy NOW. Courier is cancelled, HP Slate back to SQ1 on Palm OS (v.interesting btw), WeTab delayed and Acer/Azus aiming too close to Kindle which feels like an 80's casio computer.

These things will make a difference once we all decide how to use them.

Supply2Gov

Can they PLEASE make supply to gov (the government backed "small" tenders website) FREE

its absurd that we have to pay to access government opportunities from a government site (ok, I know they you can go trawl around depts sites etc, but thats a real PITA)

IP Trace on P2P

I have not spent much time looking into P2P issues, so tell me.

Once the file sources have been located via the tracker sites by a downloader, a Peer to Peer connection is established between the sharer and the downloader. If a downloader ran wireshark they would see the REAL ip address of the source (or VPN end point) . Faking that Real IP address to the endpoint of a P2P would surley be impossible, or the packets would not know where to go.

So its not ISPs that send IP addresses to the rights holders, its the rights holders trawining for "thier files", identifying sharers and then asking for the physicall address relating to the IP they have seen sharing the files?????

(This is a question so no flames, I want to know how this works)

As a potential Mac owner

Two observations

400+ MB is a Lot of data to shift (im on "Honest" you-have-a-limit-broadband)

Why are MAc updates FREE Updates but Windows Updates are Security Patches, how come microsfot are not reported as having "Free Software (patch) Tuesday"

Close down farms

Yes farming (that thing they used to do in the countryside) is NOT GREEN. Yep lets all live in cities and get our food flown in from somewhere else because we dont want UK farmers to contribute to climate change.

We can tarmac over the farms and build affordable houses as we want to help the homeless people too. Now wheres my folding bike.

Rumor

I heard that last year scrap prices were so high, and high st prices so static (due to stock turnover issues), that you could buy copper pipe form B&Q and sell it as scrap for more than you paid for it!

Sounds daft, but then again.......

(as in when oil prices were high, oil sellers (e.g car engine oil) ( had stock that cost a fortune, when the prices dropped they sold off the old cans at high price before selling the ones (form the back of the shelf) at the low price. This can work the other way as well

Test St

Perhaps they live at

1 Test St?

Mr and Mrs Test

1 Test St

Testville

TE5T1NG

Say you never did that! (Ok never anywhere that mattered)