* Posts by Charles 9

16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

'Fibre broadband' should mean glass wires poking into your router, reckons Brit survey

Charles 9

Re: Time for a bigger stick.

Do that, and you'll probably just price everything out of range. Everything has an effect.

Charles 9

Re: Business view

But trading floors pay bookoo bucks for their bandwidth. And they can usually afford good lawyers. Compare with the average consumer who's going to demand cheap.

US drug cops snared crooks with pre-cracked BlackBerry mobes – and that's just the start

Charles 9

Re: Illicit drugs and Alcohol/Tobacco

Ask Colorado. They're ahead of Canada in this regard, and they're showing both pros and cons.

Charles 9

Re: Symptoms of misguided policies

But as I recall, one has to pick one's fights. I mean, I can't picture three drugs more ingrained into society more than alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. To the point swarms of people willingly defied the law to look for a drink. More loyal to their vice than to their country; that sends a message, I would think. Forget psychological and physical dependence. We're talking societal dependence here.

Charles 9

Re: Symptoms of misguided policies

Directly from cannabis, no. But what about indirect. There is a verified death from DWS, and there are strong hints many don't stay with weed and look for stronger stuff.

Charles 9

Re: Well maybe

I think the problem is that ALL tech as we know it is dual-use. What can be used can be ABUSED. And if it CAN be abused, the human condition dictates it WILL be abused. AND it's hard to tell which is which because the latter is always done on the QT with parallel construction used for plausible deniability.

IOW, what good is rule of law if someone is powerful enough to get away with breaking them?

NAND the beat goes on: Samsung to fling out 96-layer 3D NAND chip

Charles 9

PS. Reading the article shows how they terrace the layers to buy some space. I wonder if the next step from there is to staircase all around the via and use that to get to 128 layers and so on?

Charles 9

Re: If Only It Worked That Way

"loan/trade/resell rights, irrevocable right to use the software, et cetera"

They've already found ways around this by use of value-added material that ONLY applies if the game is bought new (usually through one-time-use codes packed in the box--they've been around since at least Forza Motorsport 3). As for the price, I usually wait until they're on sale, and online sales can usually beat the B&M sales because there are lower publishing and pressing costs.

Charles 9

Re: If Only It Worked That Way

"So the capacity of the BluRay isn't really relevant, these days it's really just a 'keydisk' system more than a content delivery system."

Not true, as some consoles are airgapped, or is an Internet connection a listed requirement these days? Plus downloading 50GB of patches isn't an option, either, as many end users have issues of data caps.

Charles 9

Re: If Only It Worked That Way

"Tech waits for no one, AC. By the time a 10TB flash drive retails for $300, games will probably be running at 8K and each will require 400GB of storage for its textures."

BluRays will have to catch up in capacity first as they're still the go-to medium for the consoles (which now support 4K), and last I checked, they're still limited to 100GB. Meanwhile, the biggest single title I've seen from Steam has been Final Fantasy XV (~85GB).

Google offers to leave robocallers hanging on the telephone

Charles 9

I'd be careful. It'll probably soon reach the point where ANY bit of voice you emit will be twisted around to produce a plausible "yes" for them.

"The international standard of phone manners requires that the caller introduces themselves first!"

I tried something like that. Turned out it was a live caller who'd been in the trenches and countered, "Actually, the standard demands the callee simply stand there and take it as they have no legal control over the conversation. If you wish to speak to our legal team where you can cite the actual law that states your case, I'll be happy to transfer you. Otherwise..." and kept going.

Charles 9

Re: Remember the olden days...

"That you can easily counteract by picking up and hanging up in a second."

Not if you're too far from the phone. AND they call BACK. Read the one above about the cold caller who retaliated.

Plus it's getting harder to screen the calls when they're starting to impersonate neighbors and government officials, especially ones with whom I regularly interact so expect callbacks, and with Congress in the state it's in, they probably WANT this, to give them a reason to use whitelists to "accidentally" block out constituents.

Charles 9

Re: Nope

"Fair enough. I don't. I consider it an intrusion, bordering on an assault. It's very different than noisy neighbors, in that noisy neighbors are merely a nuisance."

NOT noisy, NOSY. Like Peepin' Tom nosy, for starters.

"There are many facts of life that we don't put up with, so we fight whenever possible. For me, being spied on is one of those things."

Do you work in a place with a surveillance camera? You're being spied on, full stop, and you sign away your right to protest on private property when you signed onto the job, too. Trust me, I've seen the contracts, and it's been on the news. Just about every business of note has a camera for their own protection, and there's little to be done if you don't want to be cammed. Because insurance plays a factor in their use, good luck trying to find a useful place that doesn't use them.

"We were talking about cell phones, not the internet, but this comment confuses me. What do you mean by "belong"? The internet is a communications medium, not a club."

It's more than a communications medium now Social media is part of the Internet, and guess what? It's a club, essentially, with over a billion willing members. In many parts, it's either be on Facebook or you might as well be walking on the Sun.

Charles 9

Re: Nope

You have neighbors. I count surveillance as part of the "noise": as in the stuff we don't like but have to put up with as members of society. Nosy neighbors, prosyletization, junk mail, bullhorning, billboards, you name it. We put up with a lot of stuff everyday in life. The Internet is no different, if you want to belong.

Charles 9

Re: Remember the olden days...

No, it's a recording because it doesn't stop or expect a reply. It's just a long, drawn-out ad on your answering machine, forcing you to act upon it before you run out of space and miss important messages.

It's times like this that I wish there was an answering machine that saved messages to SD card, but the only one I found was in China, and it wasn't cheap.

Charles 9

Re: Nope

But in any society, you have to put up with some noise. It's not like you can prevent the Jehova's Witnesses from coming to your door every so often (they can protest on First Amendment grounds just like you). And there are plenty of other scenarios where you have to put up with stuff you don't necessarily like because the other side is entitled to a chance just like you.

Charles 9

Re: Duping Duplex

"If they have a monopoly on some absolute necessity then they have no need to cold call anyone."

Sure they do. Some don't know you exist, so you keep calling them. After all, they've got you in Walking on the Sun territory now, especially if it's something you really can't go without. Trust me, I see this all the time, if not with monopolies then with oligopolies, as I get hammered by spam from Verizon (the ONLY other terrestrial Internet provider in town) to switch from my current provider.

Charles 9

Re: Remember the olden days...

Around my neck of the woods, they're worse. If they realize they've hit an answering machine or voicemail, they exploit it by going into a long pitch, eating up the available space.

Charles 9

Re: Welcome to the future....

I keep thinking doing something that will backfire someday by having the call script assume a press of 1 is agreeing to something like being billed and they already know enough about you to start billing you out of that. And since it's responding to something on YOUR end, it could be construed as explicit consent, raising the bar.

Charles 9

Re: If you have to HIDE WHO'S CALLING...

"The solution to that is to use DDI information to display on CLI. The problem there is that there is less "regulatory-level" control over DDI number display on CLI than there is to number assigned to the overall "pipe", which means it is open to abuse."

What is the DDI when a call originates outside the phone network, such as using VoIP? Or from a country not as strict with DDI usage?

Charles 9

Re: Who does that now?

Then your voicemail gets filled up as some systems expect this and start going on and on and on...

Charles 9

Re: I have an algorithm for this

I'm waiting to see if the spammers start using CID numbers of people that ACTUALLY ARE on my contact list, making them impossible to screen.

Charles 9

Re: Nope

Actually, the best place to hide a needle is amongst other needles, especially if like most needles it reacts to magnets.

Charles 9

Re: Nope

Then cut off all ties to society and go to the mountains. Otherwise, they can glean quite enough already just by accessing publicly-available records.

Charles 9

Re: Duping Duplex

And if it's the ONLY source of something (or if ALL of them get blacklisted), you just do it yourself from now own?

Charles 9

Re: The latest thing I'm getting

And if the scammers start USING the government numbers (as in ACTUAL government numbers)? Not like the government can actually go after them since they're protected by hostile sovereignty.

Charles 9

Re: Have a bad day!

And if they answer, "Why yes, who do you think referred me to this job?"

Charles 9

Re: Several approaches

After learning the other side often tries to record your voice in order to fabricate some kind of "yes" out of it, I find it better to just pick up and hang up. If the call is a known spammer, my NCID program pretends the number is disconnected.

Charles 9
Black Helicopters

Re: "If the AI detects that a machine is calling you and you don't want to speak to the machine ..."

"Can "The Future" (TM) please stop with the diapers and the nannying ?"

Can "The Future" (TM) please raise the IQ of the average human enough that we don't need all the nannying before they call us geeks with their problems? Otherwise, you're outvoted and are in for a rough ride.

"God am I looking forward to retirement and sending this whole technological shit to the toilet where it belongs."

And then the black helicopters start coming, immune to your bear pits AND paintball guns (and perhaps armed with REAL guns to boot).

Scam alert: No, hackers don't have webcam vids of you enjoying p0rno. Don't give them any $$s

Charles 9

Still makes me wonder if someone takes it a step further and provides actual footage...or a Deepfake.

Tech support chap given no training or briefing before jobs, which is why he was arrested

Charles 9

Re: Training...

Trouble comes when you're in a genuine zero-tolerance field, yet you're never told what in the long list can get you sacked, a la a Hall of Memory.

Charles 9

Re: Back in my day

Even masochists?

Farewell then, Slack: The grown-ups have arrived

Charles 9

Re: "death of email" ? not until chat gets federation!

"Because no-one ever receives chats from random bots pretending to be lonely young women on Skype and other chat apps?"

Uh...no. But then, I don't make my profile public. Meanwhile, I get spam in an e-mail address I never divulged, as if bots are picking letters out of a hat, throwing them out there, and seeing if they don't get a reject message.

Charles 9

Re: So MS will launch a "free" client then run all the competition into the ground and...

Well then, who CAN you trust, given that when it comes to many things (like security) you can't even trust YOURSELF?

Charles 9

Re: "death of email" ? not until chat gets federation!

Not necessarily. And if it breaks, it's sometimes hard to tell where it broke. Finally, BECAUSE anyone can pony up, it's prone to abuse, or need we be reminded that legitimate e-mail probably comprises 10% (and shrinking) of all e-mail being sent today?

Charles 9

Re: No, consistency is a FEATURE.

Ever heard the phrase, "Steady ain't sexy"? Or the idea that it's never a good idea to rest on one's laurels or that there's no such thing as perfection, meaning there's ALWAYS something better waiting to be tapped? Unless someone can PROVE otherwise?

Snooping passwords from literally hot keys, China's AK-47 laser, malware, and more

Charles 9

Re: Reading key presses by heat

I wonder if that can be countered by simply keeping the keys heated to about the temperature that's reached after you touch one of those keys, meaning its thermal image doesn't change enough to be detected.

Charles 9

Re: proceed with phase 2

Then what do you propose in its place? A benevolent dictatorship?

Charles 9

Re: Will there be tarrifs on this?

You can buy an assault weapon. It just has to be one made before 1985, protected by the Constitutional prohibition on retroactive laws.

Dormant Linux kernel vulnerability finally slayed

Charles 9

Re: Who needs an HDLC serial driver?

But aren't most Linux kernels these days modular in nature, meaning different parts only get loaded as and when needed? Meaning to trigger a vulnerability in some part of the kernel, you need to actually use that part, which would in turn get compiled into custom kernels, too?

Chirp unveils free tier of shouting-at-IoT devices audio net tech

Charles 9

Thing was, you needed a phone line of reasonable quality to get practical transfer rates out of wired modems. This has the neat trick of being able to perform modem functions in open air. As noted, it's interesting in situations where neither wiring nor EMI are an option. And yes, TEMPEST does take acoustics into consideration, so don't even try.

Put WhatsApp, Slack, admin privileges in a blender and what do you get? Wickr

Charles 9

Not specifically, but there are precedents. WV BoE v. Barnette established a public institution (a school here) cannot compel someone to speak against his/her conscience as it violated the First Amendment (it concerned the Pledge of Allegience, a US government procedure). Wooley v. Maynard ruled a resident of New Hampshire cannot be punished for concealing a government motto due to not believing in it (in this case, New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die"--as a Jehova's Witness, Maynard protested on First Amendment Grounds that under his belief, life, even under slavery, is preferable to death, meaning the state motto went against his religion). Meanwhile, New York Times Co. v. United States used the First Amendment again (Freedom of the Press) to justify the NYT's publishing of the Pentagon Papers (that ultimately led to Nixon's resignation) against the wishes of the Nixon administration. The first two blocked government compulsion to speak against one's mind. A compulsion to lie can easily be fitted into this. Meanwhile, the latter shows even the White House can be reined in.

Charles 9

"To his credit, Wallenstrom notes, unprompted, that if Wickr is served with a notice forcing it to introduce a backdoor, it will likely also include the requirement that he is not allowed to talk about it."

I'm surprised the topic of warrant canaries over this subject wasn't discussed in the interview, especially since the US has specific case law that would render a "compulsion to lie" subject to challenge on First Amendment grounds.

PayPal, Google ordered to make suspected pirates walk the plank into freezing waters

Charles 9

PayPal knows, of course, as they're the other side of the relationship. And they CAN be compelled to release information by a court order or the like.

PETA calls for fish friendly Swedish street signage

Charles 9

Re: Please, for the love of $DEITY!

They're like determined bullies. They'll keep going until you're FORCED to give them attention.

Charles 9

Re: What a palaver.

PETA will counter that we're overhunting the planet and leaving US vulnerable to extinction when the food supply runs out, and THAT is just reality and that carnivores and their ilk can either shut up and deal with it, or leave. They're not gonna leave unless you wanna nuke them, and nuking will pretty much set off World War III, in which case we'll have other concerns. IOW, how do you deal with people for which MAD is an acceptable scenario?

Charles 9

And would that include the Inuit and other civilizations for which fishing is their primary sustenance? Sounds like gristle for a "Save the Fish, Starve the Eskimos" T-shirt.

Give Samsung a hand: Chaebol pulls back Arm to strike Intel's chips

Charles 9

Re: ARM business model

If that were so, AMD would've eaten them for lunch already. I suspect there are benefits to vertical integration (in this case, Intel having their own fabs), be it quicker turnaround or a better ability to adapt to conditions (recall that it was AMD that was first to x64 with the Opteron, but Intel--with its in-house fabs--managed to leapfrog and keep well ahead of AMD for at least a decade).

I will admit that Intel's instruction set is both gift (allowing it to support more software than just about any other architecture out there) and curse (supporting all that stuff entails carrying a lot of baggage), but they're also kind of stuck with it which is why they've more or less dropped their work on alternative processors (including ARM). The fact they're IINM still the go-to architecture for performance applications also gives them a leg up on any other non-x86 architecture that wants to try to support that kind of software (since any kind of emulation, such as Qualcomm's attempts, are probably going to really stink in performance-intensive applications).

ICANN't get no respect: Europe throws Whois privacy plan in the trash

Charles 9

Re: As an EU citizen..

Bad parallel. How about a storefront instead, open to the public. Much as web site can be considered open to the public. Does not anything open to the public be required to be able to be confronted by the public it served, at least as a first resort before bringing the plods in?

Charles 9

Re: "The ludicrous situation" is the GDPR attempting to gut WHOIS

The problem here is that ANYTHING that is open to the public is ALSO (part and parcel) open to ABUSE. Which is more important: being able to find someone who may well be acting on an alias, or protecting honest proprietors from being filched by shysters who take your publicly-available information and steal your identity?