Posts by Henry Wertz 1

Not supporting industry standards

"The company cited Google’s move to Hangouts – which replaces Google Talk and doesn’t support the extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP), an open-source protocol used in Jabber."

Of course, Microsoft has used proprietary wire protocols rather gratuitously and extensively through their history (and would kind of whine when Google and Apple didn't hop to it quickly enough to support one, when it was in Microsoft's interest.) But, it's a bit worse on Google's part to switch FROM a standard protocol to non-standard (and won't even maintain XMPP for interoperability apparently.)

Full disclosure FTW

"My bet is that Google will drop this plan sooner or later; and the sooner it is, the least they will cover themselves with ridicule."

Ridicule for what? 90 days is PLENTY of time for a vendor to at least say "Hey, we are working on it." Certain vendors *cough* Microsoft *cough* may PREFER to just have people sit on vulnerabilities forever so they can just pretend they don't exist and not fix them (and yes, Microsoft, this IS a security vulnerability!) but it is really better for the public to know there are holes their vendor is not bothering to patch, than to only find out when their systems are pwned (the blackhats WILL already know about these vulns after all.) Full disclosure FTW.

Cheers to those who've tried this

Not that I want to lessen the impact of people's trying the quid-a-day challenge.. but a lot of areas do not HAVE room for a garden, and are a cement desert where there are unlikely to be any edible weeds to scavenge (if there are any weeds at all, perhaps there'd be enough to have one serving of salad.) Just saying.

I hate to say it, but I'm sure not going to try it -- the local stores? This city seems to have abnormally high prices, I'll hear radio ads for stores (in other towns, like 50 miles away) discounting stuff 50% or more, only to find locally the discounts are more like 10%, if that (and for that matter, normal prices here seem about 25% higher than "normal" too.) For some reason, people locally seem to be willing to pay full price for older pastries, bread, and so on, when there are "fresh" ones right next to it; the local stores will move this stuff in a clearance section but not discount it so much as a single penny as near as I can tell. No local store allows any of the "creative" uses of coupons couponers use, strictly one coupon per item. They seem to favor carrying tiny, overpriced containers of spices (VERY overpriced, other than salt and pepper they typically have like a 1 ounce container for about $5), I bet spices alone could amount to not pennies but like $1 a week, since rice, beans, etc. would need some nice spicing. Finally, the practical matter, my work involves physical labor for 8 hours, so I couldn't play this game of "Oh, well, maybe I only need like 1000 calories a day." I'd probably pass out if I tried it. Cheers to everyone trying this!

U2? Bleh. Russia's law? Also bleh.

Honestly, that cover does look just a bit gay. But not much. Of course, Putin seems to *love* having shirtless photos taken of himself. Russia's law is absurd, and this is an absurd application of the law. That said, I don't like U2 at all and would *STRONGLY* object to having anything of theirs shoved onto my device. But, I like to have control of my devices, therefore I never buy an Apple product.

Seems like a good idea to me.

First off... I am no Windows fan, but think this is an interesting move on their part, and I hope they have good success developing a stripped Windows. The biggest problem Windows has had is the layer after layer of congealed together, interdependent, bloated cruft; more recently, .NET and so on kind of "sits on top" so a lot of the cruft is not even necessary. This sounds like it strips it right out.

"A good deal of commercial applications require a GUI to install."

Yep, the article says right now the "install method" is to just copy files into the install image. They'll have to work on this. Most Windows installers really just ask a question or two (which can be automated for automated installs) and show a progress bar, so I can't see any reason why these can't be made to work without GUI (to be honest, I assumed they already could work without GUI -- if some MSIs get pushed onto your WIndows box by the administrator, it really pops up Windows randomly while it does it's thing?...)

" Yes Server Core has been around for how long... but we all know the rule, 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'. MS will have a hard job ahead getting every application converted to this model (if at all)."

Except, this core still had way WAY more cruft than Nano, much of which is really not needed for a server. I think Nano is taking the general concept of Server Core and going way beyond it.

"The everything remote mantra will probably work for MS shops. Those who run SQLServer, Exchange, Biztalk and the like but there are a whole raft of products out there that just won't install without a GUI running on the box."

Well, there's plenty of setups (both Windows and otherwise) where someone deploys (usually a VM these days), it runs some services. They script updates, software installs, software replacements, configuration changes, and so on, either "roll your own" or using something like Puppet -- a GUI is actually a hindrance in this case.

But, I think if the goals of Nano come to fruition, it could still be useful for your scenario where you need a GUI (although Server Core does allow removing some items) -- you could have the GUI, but (unless you want it) no print support, no scanner support, no fax support, no dialup networking, no wifi support, no DirectX support, and so on; exploits in these subsystems cannot be exploited if they don't even exist on your install.

Upgrades?

A) Non-replaceable batteries are STUPID.

B) That said, I was a bit amused to read ifixit's determination the watch is non-upgradeable.... I must admit, I don't expect my watch (if I still had one) to be upgradeable 8-)

VMs? But why?

This would be great for Intel. But I don't see the use for it.

But, why, oh why, would I want a firewall to be in a VM (instead of running directly from the firmware?) Why would WAN optimization need a VM? (The one satellite provider that I looked into, the WAN optimization runs on the box already, no VM needed.)

Why would my fridge and whatever.. well... a) Why would I want them to connect to the internet anyway? But... b) If I do, why would they have to queue anything on the cable or DSL modem, instead of just pushing the info out directly?

And finally, I'm not really convinced any of this needs any more CPU power than the MIPS already provides. I know the 200mhz (or even 125mhz) MIPS of years ago wouldn't cut it, but the newer devices are not using that slow a MIPS.

Anyway *shrug*, as a practical matter, the cable modems seem pretty stable... as for DSL, the VDSL2 modems CenturyLink provide are apparently bug city, with the best bet for any sort of stability being to use bridge mode and hope the modem firmware doesn't screw that up too... and although aftermarket ADSL2 modems are common, I haven't found *any* aftermarket VDSL2 modems 8-(

"It's not clear how many of the Android APIs it will support, but it's safe to say that some APKs may run unmodified while others won't."

I don't know if that IS safe to say. When WinRT (the Windows 8 for ARM) was first announced, it was safe to say that it would include x86 emulation and run at least some x86 Windows apps. But it didn't. I'd *hope* it would run (at least well-behaved) APKs unmodified, but perhaps apps will have to be ported.

"Often the current publishing regime blocks this and disrupts connectivity unless a publishing fee is paid for a free app, which is really off."

"Often"? Maybe Apple or Microsoft. You know what I have paid Google? A one-time $25 fee to set up my Play account. It costs me $0 to publish apps. Apparently Google didn't even charge this initially, they found $25 was enough to prevent app developers who know Google will close their account (i.e. ones posting pirated or scam apps) from pre-opening a bunch of accounts.

Microsoft, best of luck. No sarcasm here, this is a very unusual and interesting move on their part and I'm interested to see how it goes.

Yep, Apple products

Yep, Apple products are artificially locked down and restricted. I don't want the vendor holding my hand, so I would never buy an Apple product. You all can buy one if you want, but please don't act all surprised when Apple tells you (or the app developers) they can't do various things with it -- I'm telling you now, it's no surprise and par for the course.

$51 as month?

How was he paying even $51 a month? Dialup internet is typicall $12-20/month. Wow.

Why?

Why regulation? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for 3rd party firmware being available. But I simply vote with my wallet, and only buy access points with available 3rd-party firmware, and you can too.

"Frankly, it's quite sad that the developers of such a sophisticated machine could be so ignorant of basic security issues."

I don't think they are ignorant of these issues. If you RTFA, the attacks amount to a) If you send it unsafe movements, it stops, so you can DOS it by continually sending it unsafe movements. b) If you hijack the connection, you can drop packets (making movement jerky) or send it your own instructions.

I don't know if there's any way around the denial of service.. even if everything's nice and locked down, one could simply flood the internet connection and prevent commands from getting through. The second problem could be solved with authentication. However, I would see a device like this being on it's own, isolated network (the hospitals I'm aware of have any networked medical devices strictly on their own network), with an ssh tunnel or VPN to the remote end. No matter how secure the equipment is (or is supposed to be), any hospital I'm aware of would absolutely flip if they found out any of their equipment was accessible from the public internet.

As for using KU links for telemedicine... yes, but there's a big difference between having a video chat and teleoperating a robot. Video chat? A time delay is no big problem (it causes people to interrupt each other a bit if they both want to talk, but that's about it) and if there's some fade you just resume your Q&A later. Teleoperated robot? A second or two delay is very hard to get used to, if you even can, and having the link fade out mid-cut could be a big problem.

Read about Clipper chip.

"Daniel stressed that this must be a balancing act."

Whenever someone talks about a "balancing act", look out, they are looking to take away your rights!

Anyway... why don't these jokers read up about the Clipper chip. The best and brightest at the NSA came up with this at the behest of clueless Feds at the time, who requested a crypto system that would be "secure" until the Feds wanted it not to be. This involved a (secret at the time) 80-bit-key crypto system, a crypto key, and an "escrow" key where 1/2 was stored with NIST, 1/2 with the Dept. of Treasury, and on request *WITH A WARRANT* (yes they still cared about warrants then...) these two 1/2s would be fed into specialized decryption hardware (supposedly with an expiration date so the system would automatically quit decrypting if the Feds did not properly extend their warrant.)

Well, you can guess what happened -- well maybe not, you'd expect the master key was immediately found or something. But actually... mind you, this was by pure cryptoanalysis on a chip where the algorithms were not disclosed -- an algorithm design flaw was found so the chip could be made to use different keys, making the "key escrow" key useless for snooping.

I can't find any info on this now, but my recollection was over the next year or so, other anomalies were found suggesting protocol weaknesses (i.e. it wasn't cracked, but made people suspicious of weaknesses), to the point that even those who trusted the Feds were no longer trusting the Clipper chip -- and this was before any hardware with one of these chips had actually shipped. About a year later, they gave up trying to rope vendors into shipping hardware with Clipper chips, and released the specs for the Skipjack crypto algorithm. It took *1* day for analysts to find weaknesses in this algorithm (although not fully break it.)

Finally, they were using a relatively weak 80-bit key, while assuring everyone involved this should be fine for 30-40 years. This of course underestimated computer technology -- by 2010 (15 years later) all recommendations were to quit using any algorithm using that short of a key, because it's trivial to break using brute force.

If you are using your own crypto, you can crank up the key length, and use newer algorithms, as you wish... if you are roped into using some federally mandated, backdoored, crypto, you know this is not going to happen (even if they had the best of intentions, they'd probably get mired in political processes to long to actually roll out new cryptosystems as needed.)

Re: piping

The piping in DOS was also a nasty kludge; it did not support true pipes. It would write the ENTIRE stdout from the first command into a temporary file, then only when this was completely written out, open the temp file and feed it into the standard input of the next command. I.e.,

dir | more

would write the entire result of "dir" into a temp file, then open the temp file and run it into "more".

I assume (hope) that powershell uses actual pipes to implement pipes.

I'm impressed

I'm duly impressed that they could mock up an XBox One.

As for the value oft the docuemnts, there's a long tradition in the US of ridiculously inflating these figures. The example I am aware of is the 1990 case where AT&T sent the Feds after some LOD/H (Legion of Doom/Legion of Hackers) members for pilfering a confidential AT&T document. First, AT&T claimed the document was worth $75,000. Then $35,000. Then, they had the feds drop all charges when it came out that a) This document was available -- for free -- at various public libraries, including the defendent's local library, it was not confidential at all. b) AT&T would ship it in printed form to any and all for like $50 shipped.

How?

How the heck do you even submit a user edit like this? I mean, last time I tried, I had difficulty even telling it that a road did not actually connect to another road so Google Nav would quit trying to direct me through 20 feet or so of grass.

What a joke

So, it's already for HFT systems to manipulate the market, make those fractions of a cent that they haven't REALLY earned, but if someone else manages to do it they get in trouble?

To elaborate: 1) The HFT systems usually use exploits in the trading platforms to look at trades everyone else has put in ALREADY IN THE TRADING QUEUE, stick theirs AHEAD of the ones ALREADY in the queue, so they can stick themselves in the middle of buy/sell orders and "split the difference", making a profit for themselves that they truthfully did not earn in any way. When anyone complains about HFT traders, they refer to this as "adding liquidity to the market", and imply that if the HFTs weren't there suddenly nobody would be willing to make trades.. which of course is complete bull.

This guy figures out how to "trick" the HFT systems (no real people) and all of a sudden he's in trouble? I honestly think this is a load of crap, it's the HFT system writer's problem if they can be tricked by this. HFTs put up and pull trades without executing them ALL THE TIME to both try to have trades ready for things they think may or may not happen, and to try to manipulate other HFT systems behaviors (after all, multiple investment firms have HFTs and they'll be competing with each other for this money.)

2) The HFTs did cause the flash crash. The fact that his unusual input may have triggered it (if it even did) doesn't change the fact that their software malfunctioned and caused the crash.

"The XPS 410 was current in 2007. I doubt his warranty was eight years. Which makes me wonder why he was so angry that such an old piece of kit was on the blink?"

I run Ubuntu so I don't get pissed off enough at my computers to want to shoot them. But, the hardware problems of an older PC are generally fan failures, when you can hear those fans grind and stop spinning it's annoying but also obvious something's going wrong (the "numerous blown cap" Dells were GX270s, several years older). Elderly-Windows-install related misbehaviors, crashes, slowdowns, viruses and spyware, mystery popups, and so on? Those would piss anybody off. I guess the flip side of this all is, though, if the computer was on it's last legs, there was really no harm in shooting it (other than having the plod show up).

Greasy

My god is Comcast greasy. I would just like to take this opportunity to point out, on ranking of customer satisfaction, as well as ratings of general opinion of companies... Time Warner Cable is rated the most-hated company in America, with Comcast rated #2. Their ISPs are rated the two worst in the industry, and their two cable cos are rated well below any other cable company. You can just google to find plenty of problems.

The big scandal last year was several viral calls of people trying to cancel their Comcast service. Apparently they play the -- illegal, BTW -- tactic of just saying "no" and expecting you to berate them into cancelling. Personally, I have a simple solution to cancelling a service like this -- I tell them I'm cancelling (I'll answer 1 or 2 questions if they want, that's OK), ask what the final bill is, pay it, make sure I've documented the time and date of the call, and make sure autopay is disabled. If they come back later to complain about non-payment, I point out that's their problem, look in the account record and see when I called on that date? That's when I cancelled.

Does this seriously mean telemarketing?

"A significant and growing majority of the consumer engagement and sales driven by mobile advertising happens offline, such as through phone calls,"

Does the current CEO of Marchex seriously think that telemarketing will work? Honestly, a) Lots of people are on the Do Not Call list (they aren't planning to join the greasy greasy, degenrate scum of the earth ILLEGAL TELEMARKETERS I hope? Great way to get a huge fine.) b) Nobody else says they enjoy getting telemarketing calls either... maybe in the past they'd buy stuff anyway, but these days? Who buys stuff via a phone call any more? c) Last I heard (thankfully) the telemarketing market was in a rapid decline (probably due to these two factors among others.)

As for selling the domains... I think that's a good move. For GoDaddy, they provide plenty of online services so the domain goes with it. For Marchex, it'll be increasingly hard to get good money for just the domain (no value added services like GoDaddy has) when there are so many new TLDs.

"Thankfully ubiquitous, fast, unlimited 4G will probably ultimately render them as obsolete as payphone and fax machines in the future."

Hah! While 4G has GREATLY decreased the cost per GB of providing service, the providers in the US have gone full-greed and actually INCREASED per-GB charges over the past 5 or 10 years. Unbelievable but true.

Please dox these senators

"The law gives legal cover to the NSA for its massive database of US cellphone records, among other things."

This was actually one of the "shell games" NSA supporters played -- successfully against the television reporters, unsuccessfully against the online media. After initially leaning on the NSA over the (always has been and still is) illegal mass surveillance program, the TV media's attention was diverted to the (legal due to Patriot Act) call record program (which has phone # and call length only). The TV media was perfectly played, instead of leaning on the NSA to reform the illegal mass surveillance program that the public actually cares about, they "successfully" leaned on the NSA to reform the call records program.

As for these senators -- I would ask Anonymous or someone to dox them. These types of people are ALWAYS hypocrites... they will invariably have no problem saying that nobody should have a right to privacy, until THEIR OWN private information is leaked. THEN all of a sudden, what do you know, privacy is a big deal!

On the contrary

"Damn few people care about Win 10. "

On the contrary, I've had several people (who persuade themselves their old computer is slow because it's "getting old", when really they are running Windows so they have loads of viruses and spyware bogging them down), they know they can't get a new system with Windows 7, and they know they don't want Windows 8. And inexplicably they won't just ditch Windows even though they are literally doing nothing but web browsing (not even word processing...). They just couldn't wrap it around their heads that Windows 10 hasn't shipped yet, that it's effectively vaporware until the OEMs actually get it (since in the past, Microsoft has almost always stated the next Windows version will ship in the next 3-6 months, and just push that date back until it's actually ready.) They insisted they would find a machine with Windows 10 on it, I was like "Good luck with that".

"I I found Sydney Padua's Lovelace and Babbage comic quite enjoyable"

Me to, and I recall the online comic being reasonably coherent too. I don't know if the reviewer simply didn't like it (which is certainly fine) or if some bits got cut between the online comic and book.

Also... I hate to say it, it's a little harsh to call Babbage a failure but... although his contributions then and now were important, he did end in his later years flat broke, destitute, and bitter (basically from going broke before he could complete building his inventions.) Some inventors and people who start startups now use the phrase "go for broke" (invest everything into your invention or startup), and he literally did.

Great article, and spot on

I think. I think this was spot on -- the crazy amounts of problems presenters seem to have. Especially if they are using Windows (and Apples where they forget the proprietary connectors.)

The uselessness of AR too; ShortLegs brings up one definitely useful use (and I've read about a few USAF jets also having a heavily augmented flight helmet) but in general, mostly I've seen a few fairly useless (but less double entendre-filled) tech demos, with no suggestion of what it'd actually be used for.

Re: Centurylink, yeah they went and upgraded some of their "boxes" from just a wiring cabinet to remote DSLAMs with (I think) VDSL2 on it, so you can get up to like 100mbps. It's pretty picey though. Large areas end up being able to get like 3mbps or less, looong line runs and very conservative in terms of DSL parameters (i.e. a line where you could get 12mbps, they might only provide up to 7.)

I have no idea what problems CL might have with network neutrality rules though, they'd have to turn off the "falsely send DNS not found to a 'search page'" thing -- which I work around with alternate DNS servers -- but I would have thought that's about it, they really don't mess with traffic or ports as far as I know.

Yeah...

1) The clothes, you have a standardized range from 1-10 or whatever, have a "please iron with setting 5" on the clothes. Done.

2) The other example... as AC says, a 4-bit microcontroller would have more than enough power for this (and I don't even know if they're on the market any more, but even a embedded 32-bit CPU is well under a dollar) I can't see any reason to have this have bluetooth or anything in it, I would expect it to have the usual "1 through 6" or whatever temperature knob, and a mode switch to switch in a few modes to do whatever cooling off later and so on based on the sensor inputs.. I'd expect this to have reasonable factory calibrations in a lookup table, but calculating "on the fly" really shouldn't require going online either. For safety purposes, although the software should also have "sanity checks" to avoid unsafe temperatures, the existing safety shutoff should be kept as-is.

Safety can be an issue, but to avoid it I advocate using hardware safety interlocks when reasonable. For example, the electric blanket retains a temperature cutoff (the software should still have a final "sanity check" on the temperature, but some piece of hardware ultimately shuts it off in case of CPU failure or whatever). In the case of the stove... well, first, I don't know why you'd want to remotely turn it on, it doesn't take that long to heat up. But, I would use furnace-style hardware... on the furnace I have now, you hold down an igniter switch while lighting the pilot. You let up on the button, and if some temperature switch hasn't gotten up to temperature, the gas shuts off. I'd give the CPU only access to a "gas plus ignition" switch, the hardware would limit on time and excessive retriggers, so the CPU could try to blow up the stove all it wants and the hardware would prevent it.

I think anyone working on these "iot" devices that do anything important should read up on the Therac-25. In short, it was an electron beam medical device that would run the high-energy electron beam without spreader plate due to a race condition, causing about 1000x the intended dose; if some data was updated close enough to 'start of procedure', and there were incorrect results, they could slip in after the safety checks. On the previous models, a hardware interlock prevented this configuration but the previous hardware safeties were removed in favor of full software control. Most devices aren't that likely to be harmful, but I still recommend leaving in hardware interlocks.

"These days we have HD TV over Internet, which needs at least a 10MB line to be barely watchable."

Actually 10mb. (10MB would be 10 mega*bytes* per second).

firmware

"The headline of this article is VERY disingenuous and misleading."

No it's not, it sounds to me like the developers working on the open source nouveau driver are in fact locked out.

I'm with Stuart Longland on this, BTW. Having the drivers AND firmware be open source would be nice. But, 1) It seems arbitrary that people will not mind if a device has firmware on a flash ROM or (god forbid) permanent ROM, but flip out if the exact same firmware is loaded at initialization time into some RAM on the device. 2) To be honest, I've seen multiple instances of devices with closed firmware but fully open specs, and the open firmware never seems to actually get completed.

Why do I favour open source drivers? Simply because I'm less likely to run into the "kernel too new", "X.Org too new" or "card too old, the vendor is not shipping updated drivers any more" situations... not some strict purity standpoint. As for firmware, the one big argument for open source firmware to me is bug fixes -- see Intel iwl4965 802.11n wifi for what can go wrong.... the newest firmware is like 5 years old and buggy, the next-older one works for me but is very buggy for other users (I think depending on the radio envrionment, or perhaps which 802.11N options their AP is using). Intel never got the bugs worked out, just stopped work and went on to the next chip. If it were open source, perhaps someone would have gotten the bugs worked out. (The *driver* is open source, but it's one of those drivers where it just hands things over to the firmware, and the firmware fails.)

"Incorrect. Firstly, privileged parties do get to review the source code of MS products for security reasons such as this. Secondly, whilst you might not notice, there are plenty of parties that would notice Lync reaching out of your network to send your information back to MS HQ. "

First point, actually this software is closed source. Having some privileged few parties get to look over it really isn't at all reassuring to me.

Second point is 100% true, enough people run traffic sniffers to notice if Lynx were phoning home without authorization, it clearly doesn't do this or it would have been called out for it a long time ago.

Traffic interception

"HTTPS provides minimal protection against either of these - I've never come across a case of HTTP content being altered in transit, and analysis of HTTPS content is still possible, just not very easy."

I have. Mediacom interferes with people's traffic. I used to see occasional download failures on my Ubuntu updates. Why? I looked at one of the failed downloads, and Mediacom was injecting javascript code (to force some kind of Mediacom-related popup to say they were doing network work) into files that are not even HTML, like package lists and so on. I've also seen the thing at the top of the screen indicating this on pages that *were* HTML. Of course if you go for the other main ISP here (Centurylink), they hijack DNS so unknown domains are falsely redirected to an ad/"search help" page instead of properly returning the address does not exist. Other ISPs have felt free to steal banner ad space from whoever is "supposed" to be using it to insert their own ads. There was that case, just last week, about a Bell Canada being sued because they were tracking people to sell the info, and replacing ads; and people who opted out, they just quit replacing the ads but continued tracking them.

That said -- I think the furthest Firefox should go is to put some kind of warning symbol in the address bar or status bar. It simply doesn't matter if certain types of traffic are secured or not, and for something like a video stream it may just be a waste of CPU cycles. I'd also prefer to choose using some site or not rather than have it just quit working because "HTTP is deprecated." As people say above, a nosey ISP could still perform traffic analysis of HTTPS anyway...

"It's sort of funny that the US is seeking to ban what it does itself - repeatedly."

Yup, the US main two political parties, and officials in power, are incredibly hypocritical in this regard. You should see them bleat on about how horrible it is about China wanting to spy on it's citizens and so on, then there's just awkward silence when the subject turns to what they are going to do about the US's illegal spying program spying on US citizens. These guys have some kind of blinders, thinking that if they don't mention the US spying programs that they'll just go away.

Re: Sprint... heh. Sprint having billing problems? I can't believe it...hehehe. (For you across the pond, it's like a running joke with Sprint, like... boy I sure did get a good deal, I hope I don't run into billing problems.) Good on them for trying to recoup costs though, if the Feds want specialized equipment they should damn well have to pay for it.

"Well, I do. Only a small minority of people have an understanding of IT security, and expecting them to do so is as unrealistic as expecting all programmers to have an in-depth knowledge of patent or contract law."

I don't have an in-depth knowledge of patent or contract law, BUT if someone said "this simple trick will make you instantly wealthy!!!!" I would know it's bullshit. As anybody with common sense, WITHOUT having to know anything about "IT security", should know that if some simple one-liner increased storage space, it'd be the default. No comment about Apple... I'm not surprised if Apple users are more gullible^H^H^H susceptible to this.

On topic, this proxy-handling bug sounds pretty nasty!

New York City

So, they had an underground transformer burn up in New York City like 10 or 15 years ago. The cause? Some restaurant had been dumping their grease down the drain for like 20 or 30 years... eventually, the grease completely covered this ~6-8 foot tall transformer, it overheated and lit the grease on fire. Lots of smoke, lots of flame, lots of burnt out wiring.

"Maybe some of the readers of this site, but not most people. I don't want to be responsible for doing these checks on all my family's pcs every month!"

So don't take responsibility. I quit going through the "relatives treadmill" of running something that needs as much handholding as Windows, and being expected to handhold their computers, years and years ago. My sister uses a Mac, my parents run Windows. When I go to Wisconsin, other relatives, when they complain about "computer problems" I point out they are not computer problems, they are Windows problems, and I don't get those problems since I'm running Ubuntu Linux and not Windows. If they want something fixed they pay up.

"So if you're not required to install this update and can remove it at any time without losing any benefits, how can you say that the update or Microsoft "forces" anything?"

Yeah yeah, no software vendor can force anything, you can always pull the plug and reformat the hard drive. Don't be a smartass.... placing an update (which is apparently a useless advertisement and nothing resembling a useful update) into a category where it auto-installs by default is forcing the update.

Both main parties faults

@Dan Paul, both main parties have proven to be anti-privacy and anti-personal liberties. El Reg is British, and operates in a country with a functional multi-party system. They are not going to go over the miniscule differences between the US's main two political parties (in a proper multi-party system, the mainstream of these two parties would be a single party, with the religious Republican element, the Libertarian Republican element, and the farther left Democratic element, each having their own seperate parties.)

Bush gets the blame for instituting this program; each and every president since then (including Clinton, yes) who has failed to reign these powers in also gets the blame. Don't worry there's plenty of blame to go around!

How much were the chips?

Regarding "No reasonable jury could have found 50-cents-a-chip on worldwide sales is a reasonable royalty," I guess two points:

1) How much were the chips? It makes a big difference if these are like $1 chips versus (I know, unlikely) $50 chips.

2) If Marvell had wanted a reasonable royalty rate, they should have negotiated a resonable royalty rate and paid it. They didn't, so it's far too late for them to whine about the royalty rate being unfair somehow.

3) Wait, they've shipped out like 2 billion hard drive chips over 9 years? Wow.

"We’re dedicated to protecting customer privacy and thank the commission for clarifying the rules."

Yeah, way to lie Bell. (Obviously not dedicated to protecting customer privacy, when they continued to track customers who SPECIFICALLY said they didn't want to be by opting out, until threatened with court action.)

"Canada is almost even worse than the US when it comes to choice. "

There's no almost here. Canada actually has it worse -- high DSL and cable prices with low low data caps are typical. And wireless? Heh, I thought US pricing is bad, plans there have even higher data prices, instead of "unlimited voice" they have high priced capped voice plans, sometimes still with long distance charges and roaming charges outside a local market.

"Lay off the Fox News koolaid, AC. H1B employers can't give lower wages to H1B holders, immigration law mandates a higher wage to avoid 'taking them over a US citizen'. They also have to prove there's a shortage of available US citizens to do the job. There is a real shortage, probably because CompSci degrees are still low in the US."

I do agree that, in fact, the letter of the law of the H1B system actually does prevent the types of problems that I outlined in my previous post and agrees with what you are saying here. (Other than the Fox News part -- I don't think Fox News is sophisticated enough to cover H1B abuse.) But, there seems to be ABSOLUTELY NO ENFORCEMENT. I have no idea how they aren't called out, each and every time, they pay H1-B employees less than everyone else since this is so easy to determine. But, it's been documented that their pay is substantially lower, and nothing is done about it. And, as I say in my other post, to "prove" there is a shortage, they simply list impossible job requirements, then conveniently neglect to ask potential H1-B hires the same questions (which of course would exclude 100% of them too.) I have no idea how employers are not called out for this either. There is not a real shortage, there is intense competition for each and every IT or programming-related job I've seen.

And the irony...

And the irony of it is, since nobody has any use for a landline any more, CenturyLink's main method of trying to sell landlines (other than force-bundling them with services people may still have a use for like DSL), is implying that a landline is much better for making 911 calls than making them from a cell phone or VOIP service.

This spectum

So, this is (most likely) the spectrum that was used for Nextel-like systems -- Nextel ran a nationwide low-speed data, walkie-talkie, and cell phone service using Motorola iDen technology (as did/does SouthernLinc in part of the South)... these are the 2000 pound gorillas but anyone else who wished to also have licenses here for walkie talkie service (probably also using private iDEN networks). Sprint bought Nextel about 15 years ago. These licenses were kind of one-off, sometimes just 1 or 2 (30khz) channels at a time, so (licensing issues asside) typically Sprint would not have had enough contiguous spectrum to run even a single 1.25mhz pair for a CDMA channel. Sprint did get the other iDEN users rebanded so they are more-or-less contiguous, and Sprint's spectrum is contiguous, and got the FCC to let them use it for something else... so they are in fact using this 800mhz spectrum now (for about the last 5 years) for CDMA 1x (for better range than the 1900mhz CDMA they have) and for LTE service (800mhz LTE for range, 2.5ghz LTE for capacity).

That said, this was a one-off deal, Sprint cannot buy the remaining narrowband spectrum to add to their CDMA or LTE service. The investment firm should have known this, and if the investors had done minimal due diligence they could have seen "800mhz? WTF?" and thought twice about investing as well.

"If you are going to rip the CD for use by multiple people and also place it on a server (presumably not as a backup, a CD suffices, especially when unused otherwise) then why pay for it in the first place?"

He bought it because he wanted to. The music industry would want him to pay, then pay again (probably double price) for the mobile, pay a 3rd time for the ipod, and probably no way to pay for a copy for the memory stick... nevertheless, whether the like it or not, this falls within fair use (the wife's ipod being the only questionable one, but it is still use within the household after all.)

"Always reminds me of the article I read where Elton John bought eight copies of every CD he bought, one for each of the locations he required it - so easy to be honest when you are stinking rich."

He can if he wants, but in all honesty, it's fair use to buy one copy and make sure copies are at the locations he's using it.

"With the number of difficult to replace embedded devices using 2G, wouldn't it make more sense to think about freeing up spectrum by reducing 3G capacity, rather than trying to kill 2G?"

In the US, T-Mobile is now doing this, they have shuffled 3G capacity to 4G, and in areas where they were 2G only they are running 2G + 4G LTE (no 3G at all.)

As for 700mhz equipment... US carriers have been rolling 700mhz hardware for several years now. There's been some problems with initially the phones only supporting 1 or 2 of the 700mhz bands instead of all of them. I have a phone in my pocket now that supports 700mhz C block and also supports 900mhz, 1800 and 2100mhz along with US-style 850 and 1900. The hardware shouldn't be an issue really... of course paying for it could be, you need new 700mhz antennas, new LTE hardware, and lots more backhaul than a typical 3G network.

This is the problem...

This is the problem with some religious nuts in the US. Some of these people honestly believe things like they can discriminate against people based on some religious belief, and it's not discrimination, and of course say they love all people while espousing hate for whatever groups they think they have some kind of beef with. They don't get the concept of double standards either -- they will generally be so concerned that gays, or Muslims, or whoever are trying to take over the country --- but see no conflict between this and themselves wanting to take over the country and turn it into a "Christian nation" or some such. They don't seem to get the concept that they can worry about their own religious purity, and perhaps try to persuade others to join them, rather than trying to force everyone to conform to their views.

Nobody is trying to require you to LIKE (insert group here -- in this case gays)... but if you are running a business, you are required to service them just like anybody else, and you really should. Think about the golden rule -- would you like to come in somewhere, and be turned away because of (for instance) your religious beliefs? I didn't think so.

Seek other services instead

"OnLive customers facing a doubling of their monthly costs – and a little butthurt from the abrupt closure of OnLive, which will wipe all their stored gaming personas and achievements – might seek other services instead."

And I encourage anyone in this situation to seek other services instead. You've seen within the last week how Sony treats their customers.

I'll believe it when I see it

I'll believe it when I see it.... there've been cases time and again here in the US where some area has either only cable, only DSL, or both, but a 3rd party is going to move in and break up their monopoly or duopoly. Either the cable or DSL provider says "don't bother, we'll roll out (1.5x-2x the 3rd party's speed) service anyway." What do you know, "mysteriously" that higher speed service from the DSL or cable provide never actually materializes, or it covers like 1 or 2 city blocks so they can claim for marketing purposes that they rolled out the service.

That said, my main interest is LOWER COSTS, not higher speeds! The cable and DSL providers here both offer like 6 or 12 month promotional price then a MASSIVE price hike.. usually they require bundling with TV or (landline, not cell phone!) phone service too, or even "triple play" (internet/home phone/TV) to get this price. Absurdly, the duopoly pricing here is so poor that it actually will cost me LESS to get satellite internet service!

Not nutjobs

"In the USA, there's a small subset of nutcases who believe the Government is installing smart meters to emit mind control rays and spy on what they're doing"

These people are not nutcases, any more than they were nutcases claiming the NSA had a large illegal surveillance program. I've never heard of some claim of mind control rays (nice ad hominem there), but police agencies, and these same spy agencies that have been performing worldwide illegal surveillance programs already, are drooling over getting access to this type of information (whether they have much use for it or not, they just want more and more information.)

I don't think this is the INTENT of these meters (and I don't think the people opposing the meters usually think this either.) But, the US has virtually no privacy protection laws, and businesses don't feel any need to respect privacy either; so without a privacy law SPECIFICALLY restricted power data to the customer and the power co., I'm quite sure they'll feel free to sell that data to whoever. (I recall when these meters were first being developed, one of the first suggested uses was a Nielsen-rating-style thing to sell area-by-area estimates of how many TVs were in use.)

The current use for this type of information that makes the DEA-types and police agencies want it, currently they will hassle people for running grow rooms only if they have an extremely high power bill (all that indoor lighting don't you know). With minute-by-minute info from these smart meters, it's clear what's going on (based on the power going up and down right on schedule). Of course they'd like this without any warrant or court order, to data mine everybody's power use.

Beyond that, this info is accurate enough to determine when you turn on and off your TV (if you have one), microwave, washer, dryer, how much air conditioning you are running, probably when you are turning on and off the lights. I can't think of any nefarious use for this, but it's frankly none of "their" business.

Finally, what people have found in these areas is the bill invariably goes up... 1) The smart meter almost always measures the same power use as using more killowatt-hours than the older meters. 2) The power cos will greatly raise the peak power rate (which is fine) but "forget" to lower the off-peak rate below the pre-smart-meter rate, so the best people could do by shifting all usage off-peak is get the bill back to where it was previously, the being able to lower the bill by shifting usage is essentially a myth. (And if I want to lower use by notice something is using lots of power and use it less often, I can see the meter's spinning quickly with any old mechanical meter; or plug something into a kill-o-watt meter for like $10 to measure actual usage, I don't need a smart meter for that.)

Luckily, in my area, the extent of this technology is the power meter being able to radio like 50-100 feet, so the power company truck can drive down the street to get a meter reading from each meter instead of walking up to each and every meter and reading the little dial on it. (Usually, one place I worked had so much metal it didn't work... several times a year, I'd see the power co truck drive by, then drive into the parking lot closer and closer to the building, and finally park and come in to get a reading the old fashioned way.)

Quality?

(Disclaimer, I'm in the US so this is 2nd hand.)

The thing that I think has held back DAB is... well, it'd be mighty disappointing to hear FM, hear this shiny new FM-replacement, and find that none of the stations even equal the audio quality of FM, which is apparently the case.

DAB was spec'ed out long ago, perhaps good codecs weren't available yet then; but they were available well before significant amounts (if any) DAB services and devices actually shipped. They should have essentially switched to a "DAB+" like 20 years ago.

Mmm, free drone!

Of course, there's also the issue of myself grabbing and keeping any drones that may fly onto my property.