* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Forget Mirai – Brickerbot malware will kill your crap IoT devices

Charles 9

Re: telnet??!!?

What is telnet more or less than a simple raw connection to an address and port accessible to a console? Heck, you can connect to a web server's port 80 and, knowing the right sequences, pretend to be a simple web browser. Telnet will never go away because it's essentially the building block for any other socket-based protocol.

Charles 9

Then why don't you hear about Kirby and Electrolux vacuum cleaners anymore, despite them being among the most reliable vacuum cleaner brands in history? Reputation can have some meaning, but it can only go so far.

The consequences would have to be more severe for most bling customers to take the step up. And that's assuming the more-expensive brands don't get hit, too, staining the entire industry.

Charles 9

Unlikely as it would probably cost less to do a fly-by-night and reappear a few weeks later under a new name.

Charles 9

Re: Is it just me who is secretly applauding this...

"And the oft touted argument of price competition between vendors really doesn't come into it. There's no point in being a penny or two cheaper than the competition if nobody's buying your product because it's known to get bricked."

Unless, of course, THEY'RE getting bricked, too, meaning you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Ex-IBMer sues Google for $10bn – after his web ad for 'divine honey cancer cure' was pulled

Charles 9

"Watch out for ingesting rather than inhaling. Easy to OD..."

Given the substance, I'd be amazed to find ONE verified death directly attributed to it, regardless of intake method.

Charles 9

Re: "I read it in a book"

Trouble is that experiments can't help on matters of faith, which by definition can neither be proved or disproved.

Charles 9

Re: Expensive Laughter I wonder

I'm surprised Google hasn't already countersunk for vexatious litigation, which would mean if Google wins the PLAINTIFF has to pay Google's court costs.

Put down your coffee and admire the sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC

Charles 9

Re: Can someone write a "Fix" for MS snooping?

No, because most of it is now embedded into system-level signed DLL's (basically tamper-proofed). And odds are the addresses where the telemetry goes are the same ones where we get the security updates.

Charles 9

Re: Just block it

But don't those addresses also block Windows Update, meaning if a zero-day warrants an emergency update, you can't reach it?

Charles 9

Re: Come on ..

"At some point there's going to have to be something else than having to suffer the digital rape that's windows 10. I know little about WHY on earth anyone would do this to themselves. I got on Mint , Steam , PlayOnLinux and never looked back. All the stuff i need to do can be done with a trustable OS ."

Except play the likes of Overwatch, Fallout 4, and Mass Effect: Andromeda, among other headliners. If your buddies are playing Windows-only WINE-unfriendly games, you're locking yourself out. And it's not like the geeks have been trying to make them work, but things are now getting so sophisticated that it's not really worth trying anymore. Look at where ReactOS is stuck.

Charles 9

Re: Why do they not give us a option to opt out altogether?

Even off the grid, they'll get you with "geologic" survey planes and spy satellies.

Charles 9

Re: How on earth...

" How on earth did we ever sink to the point where doing this without the obligation to allow for a total opt out is actually permissible?"

Two words: Captive Market.

Charles 9

Re: oh horse sh*t

Not THESE days. The video memory is MAPPED, usually into the KERNEL's addresses space (as is most device address space in your average OS since the drivers reside in kernel space). That's why 32-bit OS's hit a snag when large-memory video cards appeared. With enough RAM between the system and the video card, if you didn't use PAE (which had hiccups of its own), the system ran out of addresses for mapping everything.

Charles 9

Re: oh horse sh*t

Really? How else can you get good video performance (especially memory-intensive 3D performance) without getting close to the metal?

Charles 9

Re: Solution

"Hardcore professionals? Its a game FFS..."

So is football.

Charles 9

No, it's Vista's XP. XP was a lot better than 2K, just as 7 is a lot better than Vista. It reduced its footprint, allowing Starter to work on netbooks, and a lot of under-the-hood stuff was a lot more stable compared to Vista. Plus UAC wasn't as nagging.

And if you say 10 is faster than 7, perhaps you can display some independent numbers to prove your claim.

Charles 9

Re: I thought

Microsoft owns one of them, so that's not an option. Plus for professional gamers, consoles are not an option because most games separate players by platform due to control differences (Blizzard has explicitly stated this is the case with Overwatch). That's why, unless the game is exclusive to consoles, professional gaming leagues stick to PCs, and since most PC games are Windows-ONLY, guess where that leaves them?

Charles 9

Re: Soft target?

Clearance sale. If you wait until you get home, it'll be gone by the time you get back. I speak from experience and this was in the days of the N95 when wireless internet was just starting to take off and mobile browsing was a pain, but it was SO worth it, too.

Charles 9

Re: "If you really want privacy at a particular time, then... "

Unless Microsoft really ARE being requested to do so by law enforcement...

Charles 9

Re: "If you really want privacy at a particular time, then... "

"Should I really need live CD/USB drive, a VPN and Tor to do it????"

Yes, because it isn't paranoia anymore. Everyone really IS out to get you.

Charles 9

Re: So, what can an individual do about it?

So you're saying security updates are useless, seeing as they're supposed to keep you from getting pwned?

Charles 9

Re: serious question

It's practically impossible to prevent a piece of software in a VM from finding out it IS in a VM. A timing attack is all it really takes, and there are ways to prevent the host from realizing you're performing one (either internal by instruction timings or externally by polling a timebase).

Charles 9

Re: Now THERE'S ya problem...

"The engineers should get up from their desks, walk out the front door, turn and look up at the company sign on the building.... (see title)"

But then they remember the logo that appears on their paychecks...AND the long lines at the unemployment office...AND the lack of good alternative jobs anywhere nearby.

Sometimes, weathering the storm is better than trying to run from it.

Microsoft's new hardware: eight x86 cores, 40 GPU cores

Charles 9

Re: Steam

Goes both ways. You can't play WoW on a console, or any of the Civilization games, or the Witcher series. And Overwatch separates by platform so PS4 players can't challenge PC players.

Charles 9

Re: This "or" That ?

Well, them's the breaks. If you wanna play WoW, you gotta pay up, and that's just for that one game.

As for Xbox Live, it covers all Microsoft gaming products still in operation. It even provided benefits to Windows Live before the system was deprecated. So it will cover the Scorpio.

Charles 9

"That passthrough requires the xbox to be on though... which is a massive pain in the arse."

But necessary due to HDCP, meaning any kind of bridge device must be active to work. I believe those Google TV boxes had the same issue. But as for the power use, has anyone actually checked the One's power usage when it's just idling? I know from experience that electrical usage in PCs can vary significantly between humdrum desktop use and full-on gaming, rendering, or encoding jobs.

Charles 9

Re: I'll buy it

If a Wii has enough oomph to do it, a Pi3 should cut it just fine.

Charles 9

Even if you have just one 4K HDMI port, you can always use a switch. Plus Xbox Ones can do HDMI passthrough. Will the Scorpio be able to do 4K HDMI passthrough, meaning it can go between the Sky box and the TV? Don't know yet.

Charles 9

Re: I'll buy it

But when the library moves on, you'll probably have to download it again and again, paying up each time, unless Sony provides some assurance against this in writing (Valve has such for Steam's lineup)

Charles 9

Re: I'll buy it

"Custom "Steam Machine" time then (actually, just Linux running Steam, but that's _more_ useful)"

You know you'll be missing more than half the Steam library by using Linux, including most of the new games and headliners like Fallout 4. And outside Steam, games like Overwatch and Mass Effect: Andromeda won't work on Linux.

Charles 9

Re: I'll buy it

Don't bother. PC tech is to the point it can easily emulate a PS1. Even the PS2 is within reach most of the time.

Charles 9

Not at all. I'm just going strictly from a technical point of view. Heck, I pose the question myself at times...but in all seriousness because it provides a benchmark for real-world performance. Let's just say I'll be impressed when an ARM-based system can run the original Crysis with at least 30fps performance. For a system like the Scorpio, at least Crysis 3 is the benchmark. If there ever was a Crysis 4, I would certainly be curious as to Scorpio's ability to handle it.

No joke.

Charles 9

If a new Crysis title were to come out, odds are pretty good. Availability is the obstacle now, not horsepower if we can go by such measures as the latest Forza.

Charles 9

Re: Now all it needs is some games ...

PC games don't really hurt Microsoft's cause since they're almost universally for Windows.

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority… OK, maybe second-highest… or third...

Charles 9

Re: Local bowling club does signs right

Then someone comes along and pisses-and-misses with the toilet seat down. When called out on ot, he replies, "I'll pisses-and with the seat up as soon as women pisses with the seat up."

PS. In response to the sign, he replied he came for the piss soup anyway.

Charles 9

Not as up to date. Plus there's the lack of traffic data or automatic detouring. Saves time when there's an accident a few miles ahead and you want to evade the two-mile-long traffic jam you can't see yet and would rather not because then it's already too late.

Charles 9

Re: You lost my sympathy right here:

"Money works, and places which don't like being paid with money won't get paid by me - not petrol stations, not <insert preferred supermarket chain name here /> and most definitely of all, not pubs. (Being of a sensible disposition, I never buy coffee from coffee shops in the first place, because it's five times the price of making it at home and isn't as nice.)"

One, what happens when NO places take cash anymore due to a rash of counterfeit notes being passed around or some other reason like government-mandated tracking?

Two, what if your home has hard water, making it rather hard to make a good cup of coffee at home?

Charles 9

Re: Programmers should code for failures

That won't work because eventually the failure reaches your code, and that's a failure that can't be handled because you're talking failsafe failure: a failure IN the failure handler.

Charles 9

Re: Local bowling club does signs right

"STILL WOULDN'T KNOW. NEVER LIVED IN A HOME TO KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE."

Back to you.

Charles 9

"Add Printer Driver

The files installed are not valid for the selected architecture.

Retry / Cancel"

Something you're probably going to see if you attempt to install x86 drivers on an x64 OS.

Charles 9

Re: I remember this one; what ever were they trying to get me to do?

Varnish is a web cache server (read: accelerator). They're actually borrowing from the Amiga, which IIRC came up with the term "Guru Meditation Error" while playing with a balancing board one day (where you're supposed to sit yoga-style on it and try not to let it tip).

Charles 9

"FWIW, I vaguely recall there is a school (probably as in: group of non-mammal meat sacks that would be more useful once tinned) of interface design that thinks the more cryptic the error message is, the more likely the user is to give the exact message."

The idea is to give the user no room to interpret the problem, as that more often than not leads to miscommunications and the problem not getting fixed. The worst kind of person a tech caller can have is an impatient know-it-all. By leaving the user clueless, they're likely to be lost enough to just follow along for hope of an answer. That may be why that "Pinocchio" error message: to leave the user clueless so they get in the mindset to just follow what the tech says to do and not "interpret" things and go off the rails as a result.

Charles 9

Tell me. If customer satisfaction is advertised as top priority (over even making money) yet it is not, why does no one take them to court over false advertising?

Cops, Feds spaff $100m on Stingray cellphone snooping gear – and there's sod all oversight

Charles 9

Re: Hunting Stingrays

"You'll probably want to do all this stuff on a secondhand mobile phone with a PAYG SIM bought with cash in a corner shop with no CCTV ."

Good luck finding such a shop. A CCTV at the till is SOP for most shops (no matter how small, thanks to $200 DIY kits) to help with identifying hoodlums and robbers.

An echo chamber full of fake news? Blame Google and Facebook, says Murdoch chief

Charles 9

No, the REAL real blame must go to the users who insist the webmasters link up with Google and Facebook and the like because that's what they use, that's what EVERYONE uses, and they could care less about the rest.

IOW, it's herd mentality, and it's as prevalent in the human race as it is on other animals, much as many of us would deny it personally. That's why peer pressure is so powerful. That's why network effects work, and so on. We're social creatures; we wanna belong. We don't even think about it most of the time; it's that much of an instinct.

Charles 9

Re: Luddite Whining

The Internet, like most things competitive like a poker tournament, eventually has an endgame. You eventually have a winner.

Charles 9

Maybe the reason there's a duopoly is because that's what most of the masses want. Conflict makes them uncomfortable, so they instinctively seek out sameness, sanity, and comfort. If that's the case, then it won't matter if it was Google or Facebook. Even if they never existed or ceased to exist, someone else would've just settled in their place.

Mozilla plots TLS 1.3 future for Firefox

Charles 9

"A ZSK is typically 1024-bit and is typically rotated once a month (sometimes once a week) - you are not going to brute force a 1024-bit private signing key in a month. Or even six months."

Two words: Shor's Algorithm. Don't assume the State doesn't have a working high-qubit quantum computer humming away as a black project (such as under that data center in Utah).

Given such a paranoid world, why stick with such short keys at all? Why not make 4096 the LOW end and go from there?

Is this a solution to Trump signing away your digital privacy? We give Invizbox Go a go

Charles 9

Re: >Tor has become the go to network for illegal activities

"By making it clear that privacy has been sold, there should be an impetus for people to take responsibility for themselves."

Except most people don't care. Look at all the sheep sharing selfies on Snapchat or exposing their everyday lives through Facebook and Twitter and so on. The smart are being seriously outvoted.

Charles 9

Re: there's always another way

Not if it's mandated by law. Then ALL the ISPs have to do it.