* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

HALF of London has outdated Wi-Fi security, says roving World of War, er, BIKER

Mage Silver badge

Re: re: Had to downgrade security as the TV supports WEP!

You can spoof MACs

Mage Silver badge

Even the UK Police recently mentioned what I said over 6 years ago.

Don't use ANY public WiFi without VPN. There is no way to know how trustworthy it is.

HTTPS isn't secure from a "man in the middle" attack.

Watch out, Yahoo! EFF looses BADGER on sites that ignore Do Not Track

Mage Silver badge

It's really only 3rd party cookies that are the problem. You usually DO want the one(s) belonging to the sites you log in to.

Almost all privacy issues are 3rd party ones (they let a 3rd party track you as move from site to site!).

Firefox lets you disable all 3rd party ones. But some actual sites then are confused unless you delete the cookies for that site and let them be re-created. I don't know if it's a bug. But at the FIRST time you disable ALL 3rd party cookies you might have to log out of a site, delete (not same as disable) all cookies, close browser, open browser then log in again and the "desired" site cookie then works.

Mage Silver badge

3rd party cookies

There is zero reason to allow 3rd party cookies. I have them blocked ever since I could.

ARM tests: Intel flops on Android compatibility, Windows power

Mage Silver badge

Intel has an ARM licence

They didn't flog ALL the ARM chips to Marvell either.

Why don't they swallow some ego and use their world beating production engineering, design skills etc to make a better ARM SoC.

Or could it be they think that they can charge a higher margin on x86 chips if they manage to dominate a market?

Really we don't need a narrow focused US company that dominates the PC CPU arena to be successful in Mobiles, Set-boxes, Tablets and over charge the Consumer, do dodgy deals with OEMs and cripple SW development with poor architectures and concentrate more on Process Shrinking than Architectural Innovation.

ARM's licence model encourages diversity and innovation. Intel's sales model is the opposite.

Stephen Hawking: The creation of true AI could be the 'greatest event in human history'

Mage Silver badge

Re: Re. AI

There is no evidence that complexity or performance results in AI. A modern CPU is no more intelligent than a Z80. It's faster. Presumably if you had enough storage, data and a suitable program an AI program's speed, purely, would be affected by technology used.

There is also no evidence that replicating neurons or what people think is a brain's structure would result in an Intelligent machine. If Turning is correct, then any program that runs on a Super computer will run (slowly) on a real programmable computer made with mechanical relays. All CPU parts can be replicated with relays. Add sufficient storage for the program and data. Even Address size isn't an issue as that can be and has been addressed by a larger virtual address space and even software based paging to additional storage. This just simply slows the program.

Mage Silver badge

Re: AI is already here . Dumb enough

None of those actually use AI.

Mage Silver badge

Re: I just wish....

In reality Moore's law started to tail off rapidly about 2002.

Mage Silver badge

Agreed

None of the present examples are AI. Hawkins should stick to Physics & Mathematics etc.

We can't even agree on a definition of Intelligence, which is partly tied up with creativity. So how can anyone write a program to simulate it. The history of AI in Computer Science is people figuring how to do stuff previously thought to require intelligence and redefining what counts as AI rather than coming up with a proper rigorous definition of Intelligence.

Laser deflector shields possible with today's tech – but there's one small problem

Mage Silver badge

Re: "spin and a highly-reflective coating"

No, still a chance as the USPO largely ignores publications and prior art.

Oh Sony. Have we learned NOTHING from SuperAIT?

Mage Silver badge

Seems bonkers

Unless about 1/10th price, high margin, very reliable and about x4 the storage and speed of competitors.

This seems unlikely.

Boffins pen 'Guide to better spamming'

Mage Silver badge

Fraudulent Source?

How do you decide that?

I have ONE SMTP server access, my ISP.

I have 20 or so email addresses on different domains.

I select appropriate source and reply to, which is hardly ever the domain of my ISP, when sending.

Sony on the ropes after revising losses UP to $1.3 BEEELLION

Mage Silver badge

Re: It's not my birthday today! @Gene Cash

CD was joint Sony / Philips.

Compact Cassette was Philips, but Sony made first pocket sized player. They had earlier made a portable transistor tape recorder with wind-up motor (i.e. like clockwork) to save batteries. A German company in late 1940s or 1950s had made a portable battery valve tape recorder with gramophone style "clockwork" windup for tape transport. Sony miniaturised it with Transistors in early 1960s.

Sony did do the failed Elcassette which was really HiFi (compact cassette wasn't!).

They also made a wonderful 8mm portable VCR/camera that could play Analogue tapes as well as recording/play Digital. Great "bridge" to put analogue on PC via Firewire via its analogue input.

They also made the failed US slot mask idea into the working Trinitron.

BD isn't dead, they just can't compete with Chinese.

.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Ooops

I doubt it. Apple do not have the Reality Distortion power any longer to sell £200 TVs at £400 and £500 models at £1000.

There is no margin in TVs. Samsung and LG make very good TVs. With slightly rounded corners. Would Apple's Sony-Apple branded Chinese made models compete?

If they don't sell them as Sony, they don't need to buy anything. Any Chinese OEM will make Apple a TV, nearly as good as a Samsung or LG. If they did sell them as Sony they can't have Apple pricing.

I think Turkish Vestel is now making the Toshiba. They made the Mitsubishi Black Diamond even back in the 4:3 CRT days. So why would Apple buy ANY Japanese TV brand today? The physical sets would be made in China or Turkey or Malaysia anyway by existing OEM such as Foxconn or Vestel.

Mage Silver badge

Sad

The giant Philips is gone. Back to pre-1922 Light Bulb business. They were the only serious European innovation [consumer Electronics, Valves, then Transistors then ICs, they owned Mullard from 1928) and only meaningful competition to Japan from 1960s.

The great German companies all gone entirely (Grundig, Telefunken) or only Industrial (Siemens). The UK consumer Electronics played out by 1960s, Thorn was the last and strangled by their own bean counters killing quality.

Another step toward Chinese dominance. All those traditional labels you see (RCA, Alba, Bush, Goodmans, Grundig, Philips are just labels on Chinese or sometimes Turkish (Vestel) OEMs.

The American Consumer Electronics are all long gone. RCA 1986.

(Apple is a Marketing company, Intel & Qualcomm narrow chip markets, MS well ... no Consumer Electronics giant).

The influence of the Media division from the days of Mini-Disc has crippled Sony Electronics.

Shocking 'new iPhone' is also - BZZZZT!! - a Taser-like stun gun

Mage Silver badge

Re: Stun devices

Take the 300V generator out of a single use £5 camera from Tesco.

Probably best to swap the 300uF capacitor used for the Xenon tube for a 1uF to avoid killing yourself (will cycle 300x faster too!). Uses a single AA cell.

It and the battery will fit in a matchbox or scrap gadget of your choice.

Warning: carrying this may be an offence in some countries. Or kill the owner.

Google Glass teardown puts rock-bottom price on hardware

Mage Silver badge

Maybe more than $100

But possibly under $500 retail to regular public.

The current price isn't unreasonable for a limited production test bed.

What resolution image does it do?

Ofcom snatches spectrum from SPIES for mobile broadband

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Ofcom Interests

1) Selling spectrum licences to people with deep pockets

2) Not actually policing anything, hence the Broadcast damaging "White space".

They are not fit guardians of a one off national resource. It's not like regulation of Baked Beans production.

Today's bugs have BRANDS? Be still my bleeding heart [logo]

Mage Silver badge

Re: Note to all C programmers

Also C programmers are in denial, or they would not be C programmers.

This is totally obvious from the comments and votes.

Makes me despair about the chance of better SW. Yes, C is flexible. It's also like using nitroglycerine to dig the flowerbed.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Bring back Ada

I think Modula-2 is nicer than Ada, but sadly most people don't understand Modules and Co-Routines to implement Objects and Concurrency. But C++ is preferable to C except when people use a C++ compiler to write C. Strustrup didn't want the amount of backward compatibility there is, but AT&T insisted.

JAL is best for 16F & 18F PIC. Doing them with C or BASIC is plain daft. They don't have the right architecture for pointer rich C or C++ (nor very suitable for Modula-2, Pascal, Ada, Java/C# etc).

I think we are stuck with C++ and Java (C# is really MS Java), but no excuse for C or C like programming styles. Or BASIC which is a cut down Fortran (I regard properly used VB5 & VB6 as closer to Visual Pascal or Visual Modula-2 than BASIC. VB.net on the other hand is C# pretending to be BASIC, so utterly pointless).

Mage Silver badge

Re: And another thing...

Why are you using C?

It was designed to make porting UNIX easily. It's not fit for purpose since late 1980s. Been using C++ since 1987.

Besides you don't need Macro to define True and False.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Once again

Of course designing your giant application as lots of small ones (in separately compiled and tested files) with a clearly defined APIs/Interfaces/layers whatever so they are separately testable "black boxes" that implementers of other parts need know nothing about the innards is a good idea. Actually the ONLY way to do bigger projects with more than two developers.

But copy & paste of small "apps" to make a big one is probably a bad idea.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Once again

What is really frightening is that many programmers don't even understand what I'm talking about. Or see the problem with source that can only be checked by running it. Or that in the source page text it's impossible to see what actually happens without mentally running a browser inside your head.

Or why Includes that are just text isn't real structure, objects/classes and can create bugs.

Mage Silver badge

And another thing...

Much more evil than Macros, or not sanitising input or not checking array bounds or GOTO are Macros.

Macros are for assembler. They are an absolute evil in a High Level Language, Don't use a Macro, EVER.

Mage Silver badge

Re: GOTO be GONE?

You seem to misunderstand why we have high level languages. It's deliberately to hide the CPU assembler / machine instructions. Every CPU I can think of uses Goto. Some like low end PIC only have stack for saving address etc due to Interrupt, they even use Gotos with parameters in an address to reuse code to simulate a function or procedure.

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Once again

Excellent Ms Stob

I was shouting in an enraged fashion the other day at the wall :

Why are the Security Mailing lists full of the same old Array Bounds Violations, lack of input sanitising and cross site scripting vulnerabilities?! (or is it !?)

Why nearly 30 years after C++ coming to DOS and every other platform from AT&T UNIX are people still using C?

I know it's too much to expect people to use Modula-2. But everyone has had time to learn how to program in C++ and port it to everything.

Why is the GUI and Web pages getting prettier but tools to develop Web Sites are like 1970s? Code if anything seems poorer than 1980s.

Verity should look at the unholy mix for ONE web page the source files mix of Java, Javascript, PHP, SQL, CSS, HTML, Oracle SQL-PL, and BOTH kinds of Adobe's Cold Fusion (Java style and XML style), often examples or fragments of all in the same source file.

You have to run it on the server and view with several browsers to even discover if it looks like you intended. Whole chunks of "code" may even be missing without warning. You have to "run" it to get ANY checking or diagnostics.

Don't let me get started on "Frameworks" for PHP etc.

10 PRINT "Happy 50th Birthday, BASIC" : GOTO 10

Mage Silver badge

"create a BASIC interpreter "

Actually they didn't. They (BIll Gates and mostly Paul Allen) simply ported Dartmouth BASIC.

Chinese iWatchers: Apple's WRISTPUTERS ALREADY in production

Mage Silver badge

Re: You will need

It's called humour.

The Internet of Things gets its own NAS

Mage Silver badge

OpenWRT

Two ethernet ports?

Add HDD on USB

Add USB 3G dongle

Add USB Wifi?

Plug between cable modem or Fibre modem and your LAN switch. Router/Firewall/Backups and auto failover to 3G?

Power it and Switch off UPS.

It's not any use for cameras without the separate HDD. If it had 3 to 5 slots for HDDs I'd call it a NAS as it is, it's just a smart router/Adaptor.

Anonymous develops secure data over ham radio scheme

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

contribution to the world of ham packet radio

I see no contribution here.

1) This isn't new

2) Piracy isn't new (over 100 years old)

3) Data comms over radio is really really old. Even in 1930s they used typewriters and almost unbreakable encoding (note the German traffic was cracked due to bad operating practices).

4) It's really easy to track down locations of transmitters.

Hams could have been using encryption and cyphers for over 100 years but don't because it's illegal everywhere.

With Laptop, SSB transmitter / Receiver you can do secure encryption on any datamode (Morse, RTTY, Hellscriber, fax, PSK31 etc etc). Like encryption on t'Internet the biggest issue is key distribution, or if you use the uncrackable one time pad, the code book!

So not news, just stupidity. Also unless you use about 100 systems in parallel on 100 different frequencies the average analogue dialup phone line is about 10x faster.

If you have very fancy gear then spread spectrum over 10s of MHz might not be noticed. Most off the shelf gear will only do a single 2.5KHz channel.

Did Google order staff to 'steal' web ad cash from publishers? THE TRUTH

Mage Silver badge

I don't believe it

Google would have a cleverer more deniable evil scheme that wouldn't at all look evil.

However though I run maybe 15 websites I don't have any 3rd party adverts, so I can't offer any pithy anecdotal evidence.

Firefox, is that you? Version 29 looks rather like a certain shiny rival

Mage Silver badge

Re: Nearly

I disabled Searching from URL box ages ago. Simple configuration change. It's stupid to combine the two. But that and the single click bookmark (which I hate) are not new to 29

Google forges a Silver bullet for Android, aims it at Samsung's heart

Mage Silver badge

What will happen next?

A fork of Android. Isn't there already a phone with cynogen or whatever it's called preloaded?

What Google control is Playstore and Android Apps. I don't believe they have lost control of them.

Any non-Google Android can only succeed if it has the important basic applications at good quality.

Hey cloud providers, HP wants your server biz back: Here's one we made earlier in Far East

Mage Silver badge

Wang

I think Wang lasted less than 3 years after they outsourced to China.

Maybe HP wants to be a Services company?

BBC hacks – tweet the crap out of the news, cries tech-dazzled Trust

Mage Silver badge

Re: people in the UK from looking at bbc.com

Outside UK it's been impossible to see full UK or N.I. news any more. bbc.co.uk automatically loads bbc.com

I gave up on BBC videos ages ago as all are prefixed by un-skipable adverts. Except many links that are really video are not "flagged" with the icon they use for video content.

What is the difficulty with letting people choose? Also surely only some video and audio need to be geoblocked. It's an insult to anyone resident in UK on a business trip or holiday and a bit naff for British Citizens who for whatever reason can't be living in the UK.

Mage Silver badge

ignored because the preoccupations of the BBC

Yes as well as the excellent examples they are also obsessed with DAB, Facebook, Twitter and especially promotion of LBGT in as many programs as possible.

I actually support Reith's idea of giving people what they should get and not just what they think they want (there is ITV for that) but BBC today has a very very narrow viewpoint. The replies to criticism that does make to air on Feedback (the web site is strangely limited despite comments enabled on some articles) are extremely self serving and patronising.

Still have you watched / listened / read :

Irish State Broadcaster RTE

Italian Media

US TV/Radio

German TV

CCTV

Arriang

Russia Today

Even with the terrible short comings of BBC they are still better.

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Actually...

They should do the opposite.

Less video, smaller graphics, more real content on their own web site. Stop pimping the proprietary, privacy slurping, ad serving, 3rd party walled gardens of Twitter and Facebook, which are at best I suppose of some value if you don't have a major web site of your own.

Companies and Organisations promoting Twitter & Facebook are not bring traffic to themselves as much as simply helping Facebook and Twitter to make money.

Reith of course would have embraced every technology to promote the BBC, but Facebook and Twitter are neither promotional tools or technology, but Advertisement hoardings that are parasites on the Web. They add no value.

What HAS BEEN SEEN? OMG it's a thing that looks like an iWatch

Mage Silver badge

Re: The mind boggles

But none of those claims are novel, lacking in obviousness to anyone skilled in the Art or without Prior Art.

None of that should get a patent or Registered Design.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Why are we getting worked up about this?

I patented that comment a few articles ago.

Actually everyone else has said already anything I'd need to say.

"doesn't look like the most exciting of patents"

So like every other pointless Apple "patent". Is this one though an actual patent or what we would call a "Registered Design", like shape of a Coke Bottle or Classic steel Hobbs Kettle?

Go ahead and un-install .Net, but you'll CRIPPLE Windows Server 2012

Mage Silver badge

Time to Migrate.

Actually we found Server 2003 so bloated compared to NT 4.0 Server and Win 2000 Server we moved to Linux. Been using NT Server since 1994.

Nod Labs forges one (Bluetooth) ring to rule them all

Mage Silver badge

Re: An interesting idea

yes, far more interesting than the NFC only ring the other day.

NBN Co in 'broadband kit we tested worked' STUNNER

Mage Silver badge

Re: Proof of Concept

Umm ... of course it "works" but at rapidly reducing speed the further you are from cabinet and the more pairs in a multi-pair cable that are active. More than 200m and coax DOCSIS 3.0 from cabinet makes more sense than copper. At 1km no better than ADSL2+

For a minimum 100Mbps from cabinet you need DOCSIS (Cable). For low contention and / or more than 100Mbps you need FTTP/FTTH. Fibre to node is an interim solution and only good for Urban. Or for Cable Operators (HFC). Any new fibre system today should be FTTP/FTTH

Trolls and victims watch Supremes for definition of meaningless patents

Mage Silver badge

Perhaps spacing isn't relevant.

Perhaps the idea is trivial, obvious or can be easily developed by anyone skilled in the Art. Any of which are supposed to kill a patent application.

Novelty needs to be in it, but novelty alone nor lack of prior art isn't sufficient.

The USPO doesn't even apply their own rules properly,

It's spade sellers who REALLY make a killing in a gold rush: It's OVER for graphics card mining

Mage Silver badge

Other uses?

Can we use these mining ASICs for anything else? Apart from trying to find passwords that generate exposed hashes on PCs / Servers.

Stephen Elop: I was RIGHT to BURN the PLATFORMS

Mage Silver badge

Nokia Name

I thought the deal is that MS doesn't actually get the option to use the Nokia name as long at it wants, but only a fixed period (is it a year or two?) and for existing models.

Victory for Microsoft as Supremes decline to hear Novell's WordPerfect whine

Mage Silver badge

Good

Wordperfect For Windows was dead before win95, fact was it was a bad attempt at a windows program. Windows 95 was irrelevant. Word & Excel very successful before Win95. And on Mac actually before windows even worked properly (3.1 was first decently working version).

Mind you MS did add Gratuitous APIs to Win95 (which they then had to retrofit to NT 3.5 as NT3.51). This prevented no-one writing good Windows applications. It was to stop new applications "for Win95" working on Win3.11 / WFWG3.11 which actually could run many NT applications via Win32s add-on.

This was not at all about stopping 3rd party programs but so Office 95 couldn't run on WFW3.11, otherwise it would have. So of course NT users got a free upgrade 3.5 to 3.51 as Office 95 wouldn't otherwise run on NT!

Polymer droplets turn smartmobes into microscopes

Mage Silver badge

Re: Low quality, low applicability.

yes.

Internet of Thingies bods: Forget 3G, let's go straight to 4G

Mage Silver badge

The Other issue is Coverage.

Many regulators have very low requirements on Geographic and Population Coverage.

Operators left to their own will do very much less coverage than GSM has. Very often 3G falls back to GSM / Edge. The 4G operators will cherry pick.

There is no USO with Mobile. Certainly in many countries for next 10 to 20 years 4G coverage will be much less than 60% Geographically and in some Western countries less than 50%.

Chap builds mobe based on Raspberry Pi

Mage Silver badge

Re: re:"*If you want contributions to the hacking of electronics;"

Biege box?

Or grey racks with loads of fans and LEDs.Seen those.

NASA spots 'new' star just 7.2 light years away

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Pedantry

But Proxima Centauri might be a member of Alpha Centauri "cluster".

Proxima Centauri is very likely part of a triple star system with Alpha Centauri A and B.

Of course wiki may be wrong ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri