Posts by Coyote

Doing things the hard way...

I don't know why malware would bounce a geolocation query off an "adult" site, which is bound to raise a red flag on a monitored network.

http://www.geoiptool.com/ works just as well and looks a lot less shady.

I've been through one of these at McCarran

Flying out of Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to go through one of these instead of the metal detector. Apparently, if I had been wearing a belt or other accessories with metal, I wouldn't have had to remove them. I'm guessing my shoes could have been left on as well, if I had known I was going to get the body scanner.

You step in, arms up, and the scan takes all of two seconds. Step out onto the yellow shoeprints (hence the shoes-on hunch) in front of the male or female screener (they motion based on the usual preference, but you have the choice) and they pat you down wherever the machine put the yellow boxes on a generic outline)

I had a chance to watch them for a few minutes: I got checked under the arms. The woman going through behind me got her underarms and ankles checked (we both had looser-fitting shirts/slacks on). The next woman had tight-fitting clothing, but big, puffy hair. She got the top of her head patted.

So they aren't jerks, and the new software is specific enough they don't feel you up all over. I patted down more thoroughly when I go to concerts or nightclubs. It does seem to need tuning as it thinks there might be something there if there's some space between your clothes and your body.

Bonus: It is by far quicker than the metal detector, especially if you know beforehand you don't have to remove/replace your belt and shoes.

BP is a joke

About a year ago I submitted an application to BeautifulPeople just to see what would happen. I'm no Adonis, and I was accepted. I think something like 75% of the people who reviewed my profile approved me. And... that site has been of absolutely zero use to me. I'm convinced BP exists to advertise absurdly overpriced events and deliver Russian bride spam. There's no way I'd pay for whatever kind of "premium" features they are offering.

I'm guessing the "fuglies" that got added via this exploit must have been the most blatantly unflattering pictures some troll could find on the Internet. Most of the people on BP aren't really that beautiful. FWIW, it's very easy to take a photo that will hide weight/wrinkles/bad skin or hair/etc... and there are plenty such photos on BP and every other dating site.

Psycho-acoustic simulation?

AKA psycho-acoustic modeling... isn't that exactly how MP3/AAC audio compression works?

they're not fooling anyone here. All they did was rip tracks to MP3 and claim the compressed version was no longer the original.

FAIL troll...

paulc,

ELF_Tsunami is an ELF trojan that attempts to exploit or brute force the DWL-900 series routers, presumable to open ports and allow connection to the backdoor on the compromised linux box.

It won't run on windows.

Across the pond, maybe...

Here in the states the iPhone is just another phone... and very popular one. I was sitting at a bar the other week where literally everyone, guys and gals, including myself, had an iPhone. Yawn. I can get more looks by wearing a nice hat.

Around here, unfortunately, the iPhone is moving into the (personally despised) category of 'bling'. Everyone of a certain culture just has to have an iPhone in a blinged out case. Mine is naked and proud, despite having a few battle scars.

Now, let me be one of the first to get my hands on one of those just-leaked iPhone Pro (that's what I'm calling it) and I'm sure it will turn some heads.

just pipe the input to /dev/null

...makes it run real fast!

I wonder if...

...they WERE trying some kind of funny business against the App Store.

Can't complain

Unlike the wankers who filed this suit, I have two brain cells to rub together and never once thought WGA was either a security patch or spyware. I wouldn't even call it DRM, as it doesn't restrict you, it just nags you.

Yes, I paid for Windows. Not-so-happily with Vista, but happily with 7. My ONLY reason for keeping my desktop on Win 7 is Media Center. Digital Cable support is nice.

Laptop is a MacBook. OS X is wonderful, but don't try to tell me it's free as in speech or beer: Sure, you can pirate it all you want... But just try running it on a non-Apple box. Aside from the lack of drivers, Apple does encrypt certain binaries using a key in the "Genuine" hardware's TPM. Sure, the OSx86 guys cracked it for now, but my point is: Apple doesn't care about OSX sales, they care about Mac sales. MS enforces a genuine product key, Apple enforces genuine hardware.

Linux? Well, it's great at work, and it's great on my wireless router. But it just ain't there for my personal needs.

There ARE bad cops who don't want to be caught on film...

The real issue here is illegal surveillance of the person(s) under arrest.

On-duty police serve the public and are subject to any and all monitoring that doesn't endanger the officer. In other words, no surveillance of undercover cops, and it doesn't take a genius to realize why.

However, when it comes to recording arrests, persons in police custody still have rights, including the right to privacy. Quite often people who get arrested are not charged, the charges are dropped, or they are found innocent.

If you were arrested would you want a video of it floating around YouTube forever?

I can't believe no one has pointed this out yet.

Oh really?

Then please explain to me why I have to get a mop and bucket when I have hit that spot on some women... Not that I'm complaining.

Mine's the one with the Rabbit in the pocket.

I've always wanted to sign up there...

I'm fairly sure I would be accepted, based on the comments I've gotten on my profile pics elsewhere. And I'm fully aware of just how shallow and dull most of the women on there probably are... The point is to troll them until I get booted off.

Paris, naturally.

'Searched' info hits harder than 'surfed'?

O RLY?

Those researchers have obviously never seen what happens to someone when they accidentally surf to Goatse.

Stop and go is what e-cars were made for.

Electric cars don't idle. A stopped motor = no charge used, and with the kind of torque motors can deliver, you don't need high drive RPM in low gear.

If all you did was 5-10 miles of stop-and-go city driving each day, you wouldn't need to charge it all week and then some.

No, it's just that...

the spooks just love to use their massive bandwidth to torrent stuff.

@ LuMan

The moon is considered female in just about every mythology for precisely that reason. The lunar cycle is almost exactly the same period as, well... some women even synch to it.

Feminist flames that arising from said observation? Now that's amusing.

...mine's the fur (and claws, and teeth) that sprouts once a month.

so...shane, is it?

Why bother commenting on something you have no interest in?

You feel all self-important now?

There's a term for ignorant, loudmouthed people like you, but it's often used as a racial slur so I'll skip it.

As for MSE? It does what I need, and it's lightweight. The SpyNet thing is used to develop definitions and the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

On the other hand...

The inevitable update to iTunes will hopefully fix a few of the many many new bugs introduced in iTunes 9. Playlist play order, what's that?

Of course it will stay paused...

Every iPod since the 1st generation has been able to do that... "Power off" on an iPod is really just turning off the screen.

Exceptions being the iPhone and the iTouch: if you do the "slide to power off" they have to boot when you power them back on.

In fact, audiobooks on the iPod can hold your place even if you play other tracks.

Commodore BASIC

was partly written by Bill Gates himself, and is still copyrighted by Microsoft, so there are legal issues when it comes to including it.

Electronista seems kind of clueless..

...which makes El Reg clueless by association.

- IP address? You don't say! El Reg had mine the instant I read this article.

- For retail licenses, if WGA can't phone home, it doesn't care. As long as you're activated, you're good. It will not lock you out.

- For OEM licenses, WGA does a local check to see if the right product key is still in the firmware, and if so, it never phones home.

- Volume licenses do not permanently activate in Vista/Win7! WGA requires a check-in with a license server (@ MS or on a LAN) every 30 days. You can rearm this x3 for 120 max.

- The only think WGA phones home is a hash of non-personal stuff like your OS version and product key. Technically, the product key belongs to MS anyway. Yes, that info does identify your copy of windows, but not you or your computer... when someone else (or lots of people...) have the same hash, they have the same product key. That shouldn't happen ;)

You send more information than that when you activate windows, such as your hardware hash, but that info is only kept for a couple of months. After that, you can actually reactivate with the same key on another machine without calling MS.. but do it too much and WGA will notice.

Oh, and lots and lots of professional and shareware software phones home periodically, and did so long before MS used product activation. If you don't like it, use free/open software.

Oh yeah..

WinNuke is back, baby!

Any computer will do that...

If the power supply pops.

I've seen more than a few do it on the workbench, after being brought in for "randomly powering off"

It reeks.

It's the Betas that start expiring.

The RC doesn't expire until something far off like June 2010. Well after it hits retail.

Even after the RC is no longer offered for download... I'm sure you can find it somewhere... and it's been discovered the product key you're given for the RC is actually one of only six.... so there's apparently no limit or uniqueness to RC activation keys.

In fact, you could install the RC, activate it, upgrade it to RTM, and just not reactivate until it hits the shelves and you can purchase a copy for the key. That's what I did, and about as legit as you can get with RTM right now.

White MacBook? Heavy??

At what, 4 or 5 lbs? My cheapo Dell Inspiron 14 is almost 6 and that's light compared to the boat anchors I used to lug around, ESPECIALLY the corporate slab o' Latitude I have for remote access.

For years, I've thought the MacBooks/PowerBooks were slim and lighter than most. The Air seems like a ludicrous expense and trade-off of functionality for a little less weight (and a lot more style, admittedly) Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of Apple kit worth the price. Most of the time I find myself not even needing a laptop 'cause I can do it all from my iPhone.

Paris, because she's thin and light but short on features for the price.

Li-Poly?

I thought Lithium Polymer batteries weren't supposed to "vent" like that, even if punctured.

All the exploding laptop incidents involved Lithium Ion batteries. Apple uses LiPoly in iPods , iPhone and now Macbooks.

Something odd is going on here...

It's unlikely, and I mean HIGHLY unlikely a drop or a bump would cause the LiPoly battery to explode like that. Lithium ION batteries have a well-known "venting" hazard, and all of the exploding laptop/phone/(older)iPod stories we've heard so far involved Li Ion.

Current generation iPods, iPhones, and now even Macbooks use Lithium Polymer batteries. One, that's the only way they can get the batteries small enough to fit in really thin devices. Two, Li Poly is supposed to eliminate that so called "energetic decomposition".

As for the "exploding when dropped"? I have personally seen iPhones that were squashed flat in a variety of ways, including backed over by a construction vehicle and dropped several stories. In some cases, the battery was the only part of the device that wasn't damaged. In most cases, just the glass and LCD are cracked. The plastic cases of the 3G don't fare so well either.

Even if you did damage the battery pack? Hell, there's a "will it blend" video of the iPhone. When the battery gets ground up, all you get is a lot of black dust from the carbon substrate. No smoke or flames, although some other devices with Li-Ion batteries combusted visibly in the blender.

My hunch? When it was Nokia phones exploding, the cause was determined to be 3rd-party batteries. These 'Apple' products that exploded because someone looked at them funny are probably knockoff devices. There's a lot of them out there, and the one thing they have in common is shoddy quality.

You don't have to activate it before the public release

a little 'alternative distribution' never hurt anyone, but there's no reason to crack it or steal a key.

We are less than 90 days from release, and the 'slmgr -rearm' trick gives you 3 rearms. That's a total of 120 days before you must either activate it or wipe and reinstall... so grab the torrent today, then buy a license when it's released!

However: If you are planning to buy an "upgrade" license: start with an ACTIVATED copy of Win7 RC/Vista/XP and do a "clean install upgrade" to the Win 7 RTM. (If you don't actually do an upgrade to Win 7 RTM from an activated copy of windows, you won't be able to enter an upgrade key.)

Contradictory

"enables .NET apps to be installed with one click."

"easily and quietly"

easily, maybe, but requiring a click is not quietly.

NoScript ~= adblock

I can't use AdBlock @ work due to policies about software that auto-updates itself, but I can use NoScript, and I find that even in its most permissive mode, NoScript blocks most ads by blocking the 3rd party scripts that fetch them.

I see some ads, but they are hosted by the actual site I'm on, and therefore can't do rude things like keep a tracking cookies across sites.

HDHomeRun

The HDHomeRun is a network tuner in the purest sense. RF in, Ethernet out. It doesn't matter what encoding the video uses, that's up to the clients to decode. There are also special versions of the HDHR designed to be cable signal analyzers and/or data stream receivers.

That's also why it doesn't come with any software other than the utilities. As a general rule, if you can tune it and get it to play in VLC, you can find something that will DVR it.

Can't speak for DVB, but the HDHR works extremely well for me in the US, tuning the free HD channels from digital cable.

Brainiac because when I first got the HDHR, getting it to work with digital cable required an engineering degree. The drivers have improved substantially since then.