Posts by JaitcH

More NSA/FBI secrets revealed?

With the increasing covert presence of American security agencies in our lives, could it be the revelations these guys want to announce are yet another exposure of a hitherto secret monitoring scheme collecting only metadata, of course, of American citizens?

Of course, the UK Plod have their number plate snapping scheme - a few eons of technology behind,

Ah, CISCO, purveyor of NSA compatible network equipment and recommended by ...

Obummer.

And their equipment is made in China.

What better guarantees for data security?

The GCHQ claims it cannot tell the difference ...

between overseas communications and domestic ones.

What a load of poop.

Given that they know the difference between transmitters and receivers and they can figure out that most domestic cables do not cross the shore line even the sad excuse for womanhood, May May of Maidenhead, could figure which was which.

Apple: too big to fine?

Since Jobs was buried - at least according to the newspapers - Cook has proved incapable of lying like Jobs and polishing the 'Apple'.

Apple wants 30% of everything - so go fine them $30-million.

The British and their Sheds

I know of no other nation that has such a fetish with 'sheds'. The Americans have their car ports and pools along with the obligatory BBQ, the Canadians their basements but only the British, seemingly, fancy sheds. In the Far East roof tops can be interesting.

Sheds are often smelly and house everything from mini-front rooms from where to escape the family, to model train setups to even storing garden tools and motor-mowers - no more smelly ATCOs though.

This Judge Morgan is a fool for saying "he was considering ordering its destruction". What a petty minded imbecile he must be.

What secrets; what theft?

Most of what has been 'leaked' by Snowden is simply confirmation, or reiteration, of an earlier whistleblowers 'leaks'.

And what is the value of a few poorly executed graphics containing some artwork stolen from others?

The ONLY thing Snowden is guilty of is EMBARRASSING the US government and opening up a can of worms.

Simple solutions

Buy laptops with camera covers; disable cameras and mics through the Windows system screen. As for mikes, just stick a dummy connector in thee audio i jack.

And set up your software properly, especially Flash and Chrome.

Acquittal is supposed to mean innocence ... except in the UK and the USA

I worked, a long, long time ago, for the now defunct MDS data equipment company.

There was an American technician/engineer who was the only person who could fix a particular problem on some equipment specially designed for a security agency in the US government. He rarely went out on calls - except for real emergencies.

He turns up at the security entrance of this US government office, produces ID and was told he could not enter. Asking why, he was told "because of his record".

Given the man had an ongoing US government clearance and did all sorts of 'heavy' design work, MDS inquired what the problem was.

Turns out, as a juvenile, he had broken a neighbours greenhouse window and was hauled off to court. The matter was settled, WITH NO CONVICTION, by his father paying money to the neighbour. No animosity - the cops had changed the whole thing from a nothing into an arrestable offence of a juvenile.

Only convictions should be recorded.

"it is not subject to any constant tracking."

that is until May May of Maidenhead gets her hands o it or ACPO decides, once again, to do their own thing as they have with the number plate photo scheme.

Then they can add tolls for different roads, the surreptitious applications will be unlimited.

ow where are my wire cutters?

Cathay cares!

I frequently have to travel trans-Pacific (Far East >> Canada - avoiding the USA and the TSA gorillas) and use Cathay Pacific often.

Of all the carriers only CX has a passenger health warning like this < http://www.cathaypacific.com/cpa/en_INTL/helpingyoutravel/insidethecabin#C > and their concern is sufficiently great to limit crews to two return flights per month.

On occasion, I have to make two return flights in a calendar month and CX flags my travel agent with a Cosmic Radiation warning. Imagine Expedia telling you?

Of all the carriers CX is the only one who considers this, dog airlines such as Air Canada, don't even warn their crews.

I expect to see a Dark Lightning warning on Cathay any day soon!

"and have that information sharable between partners" like the ...

NSA?

Yesterday, Snowden, US Hero, admitted that the USA is hacking routers - CISCO routers BTW - so undoubtedly this would be pleasing to the NSA to have but three hacks: CISCO et al; Huawei and ZTE. Much more manageable.

WHAT WE NEED is one of those unbeatable EL REG Comparison charts

The RPi, is a bit of a compromise, not backwards compatible physically, amateurish mechanical design (components piggy-backing, paucity of mounting holes, off-matrix pin layouts). Our company even bought a couple with a view to using them in a school product.

Now comes TI, a classic name in integrated circuits, with their new BeagleBone Black with 2Gbyte of on-board storage pre-loaded with Linux. AND it comes with a USB cable!

Raspberry Pi has an ARM11 core, strange, no other small board competitor does.

Then there are ODROID-U2 and ODROID-X2 from Samsung with a powerful Quad-core Exynos 4412. The U2 is an ultra-compact offering, smaller than the Raspberry Pi. Armed with 2GB of RAM, 100Mbps Ethernet, 2 x USB 2.0 connections,an audio codec with headphone and microphone jacks. For video there is a micro HDMI connection is supplied and for storage, options of micro SD and even eMMC. Android 4.X and Ubuntu 12.10 will be compatible out of the box (it even comes with an enclosure). $20 pricier than the TI.

For our school-targeted projects we are using PicAXE networked with a BeagleBone Black.

Accessory board pricing should be a consideration. IMO RPi add-ons are high priced.

BUT WE NEED one of those El Reg comparison charts to sort the wheat from the chaff.

That means faster boarding and de-planing, which airlines like ...

as it means more time in the air generating cash and less pfaffing about on the ground.

Load of bull, the aircraft still have to await their runway 'slots'. Normal people call these flight schedules.

All CISCO products are Certified ...

PRISM compatible.

Huawei‎ and ZTE are Chinese designed and NOT PRISM compatible. All three product lines are manufactured in China.

Menu-driven sentencing is NOT justice: ever heard of three strikes?

Judges are more than equipped to deal with sentencing. Even the cretin from Maidenhead, in disallowing the deportation of a hacker to the USA acknowledged that cases have nuances.

A fine example of menu-driven sentencing is the US 3-strikes and you are screwed.

How many are doing life, no parole/time off for stealing food, minor drug deals, etc?

I always thought Europe meted out punishment in human terms.

If a web site has weaknesses, or a utility is exposed, it should be incumbent for them to PROVE they had security in place and not just the manufacturers password.

What they need is a ...

supplementary alarm so owners know when the expensive factory fitted alarm has bee bypassed.

Or they could fit one of my Disablers which I sell for $5 in SaiGon. Guaranteed to work. My classy version uses Bluetooth but costs more.

The dictionary in prediction units seems too small

I make no compromises for the medium when I SMS and I also like to occasionally test my correspondents knowledge of the Queens English and so often suggested words are way out of context, except in the case of my Chinese cell handset which offers fine repertoire curvaceous shapes most of which are, um, Chinese to me.

Give me a QWERTY keyboard any day.

The US security apparatus is so good ...

they managed to catch most of the schemes their FBI 'plants' were involved in.

In fact the security is so 'good' they missed the Boston bombing and the Detroit 'pants on fire' guy. And they can't even keep the Chinese out of their computers.

The US is a failure, especially when you consider their failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

Don't laugh, Britain, it was where that idiot, Mad May of Maidenhead, wants to put YOU!

Money ... the answer to any and all problems in Russia

All Apple has to do is offer a few backhanders to the people who matter and all will be well.

Only problem is they aren't supposed to do it under US law.

So what does GCHQ know?

The ONLY reason the MPs are questioning anything Chinese is for trade reasons, absolutely nnothing to do with security.

Obummer has been around the world saying the Chinese have back doors in their network equipment whereas the Chinese-made American equipment is secure ... except for American back doors.

Given the recent revelations in the Guardian (hat tip to Greenwald) who would trust the lying b*stards that are today's American officials?

In VietNam, what time the judge gives is just about how long you get to wear ...

black and white pajamas for. The president hands out a few months off here and there - say for Tet vacation or the celebration of the Americans defeat in 1975. And the pajama is not attractive - the stripes run horizontally!

I do outreach at several of the many prisons in the province I I live in, visiting incarcerated Foreigners, and I can tell you conditions are rough. No need for bars - those prisons are miles from anywhere. And the prisons are full, too.

When I visit, along with some colleagues, we are offered 'lunch' by laughing guards but we prefer our sandwiches! The foreigner prisoners have it easy - they get to make phone calls or make taped messages on 'walks' around the grounds on equipment we inveigle in on our visits.

No TV, lots of patriotic music and an opportunity to improve their Vietnamese skills is about all that passes for relaxation.

Pity the Vietnamese guy, though, he will likely get hit with bars or heavy books until he sees the errors of his lifestyle and confesses all.

Slowly, Slowly even the most blind iPhan wiil learn they have been had

ad all the platitudes and praises are worthless .. after one year . when they get fleeced again/

The charger hack can only happen with Apple because in his haste to lock the suckers into, Jobs made use not ONLY of the two power wires like rational people, the idiot also used the two data wires to ensure the charger being used had components worth 50 cents that confirmed it was a Apple charger.

THAT is fraud, like his crooked book deal.

Remember, Jobs made money from selling Blueboxes whose only use was to steal from telephone companies.

The 24/7 noise from NZ will be deafening

It's like a breath of fresh air seeing a member of the judiciary sticking it to the government, especially where the FBI is involved.

Shows, in stark relief, the proper way and the American way.

The deference the New Zealand goverments gives their judiciary is remarkable, in Britain the minute the government loses one, out come the legally ignorant politico's criticising the judges.

Look at that piece of effluent from Maidenhead, Mad May, she took geography for her BA. And the A doesn't stand for Arts but rather the piece of her anatomy she sits on and where she keeps her 'brain'.

The only down side to this is the fact Dotcom will be talking about this 24/7 for months.

Another crack in Job's halo

Seven inchers were an anathema to Jobs.

How wrong he was.

Sinofsky pitched sales of Windows 8 licences as something

If the copy shops in Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City or Phnom Penh can't sell Win 8 for a dollar a copy, then you know you have a loser.

Check PirateBay downloads, Win 8 is a dog.

and let the industry flog kit (at great expense, naturally)

and where are the taxpayers going to find the money to pay for all this?

Isn't it satisfying ...

to watch corporate a*seholes excoriate each other?

Particularly when Americans come to Europe to do it,

"federation attempts to negotiate a deal to pay for the software"

And, pray, what does it do when one of it's principles steals software from others as MS did to Toronto software firm i4i, who took Microsoft to court for stealing its patented technology for use in the software?

The court also granted $290 million in damages to the Toronto firm.

Ah, yes, I thought so, NOTHING!

Not all the millions of CCTV cameras or all the phone and e-mail monitoring would ...

have stopped this attack.

Why should the majority of the British public be stripped of their privacy because of a couple of khat-chewers decided to off a soldier?

At least the Met will be able to track the pair AFTER the deed was done, just as happened in the subway explosion. Then they can put the videos on YouTube.

And that feminine nutter from Maidenhead, MAY, simply illustrates her ignorance when she claims this multi-billion white elephant she wants would have stopped this. Reid is as technnically challenged as MAY is.

In any event, the PLOD took 15-20 minutes to turn up on the scene, enough time for the dummies to make a few speaches to cameras. So what would all the technology have done to change the timeline?

Time for MAY to go.

Doesn't anyone know how to post anoymously any more?

Silly woman, for want of a few minutes extra time she could have saved herself all that hassle and expense.

And as for McAlpine, what was a forgettable incident by a bird-brained broad has now become memorable.

It might help if anyone really gave a damn!

GE - USA - sell a lot of SCADA equipment, all over, after all they even have a financing outift to help them.

And guess where these infrastructure critical parts are made? Of course, CHINA!

On another corner of the block the USA is deliberately blocking sales by Chinese data companies on the grounds their equipment has backdoors, but when it comes to a US company selling Chinese goods - everything is fine.

Of course, CISCO, the beneficiary of all the US Government activity, is little better. They, too, have their products bashed out in ... CHINA!

Another Cambridge success story

ARM, Raspberry Pi and now Cronto.

Of course we shouldn't forget Acorn Computers Ltd, Andy Hopper, Aveva, Broadcom, Cambridge Network, CamSemi, Camcon Technology, DANTE, Hermann Hauser, Jagex, the somewhat notorious Sinclair Research Ltd, Sagentia (formerly Scientific Generics), Global Silicon Limited, CSR plc and not forgettig Cambridge University!

In particular, Trinity College, Cambridge University for the founding of the Cambridge Science Park in 1970.

Pity the weather isn't more like California.

Wrist-based technology needs two hands ...

the one on whose wrist the phone is mounted and the other to touch, or press, those teeny-weeny controls.

Google Glass is far more suitable, with only the occasional use of one hand. Along with some winks, blinks and head shakes. Unfortunately, those suffering from Tourette's syndrome might have some challenges with Google Glass.

Another reason to use PirateBay ...

as I do for all my media these days, or simply buy copy DVDs on my trips to China.

Some 'Secret' bases

I used to visit Princes Risborough a while back, leaving High Wycombe - a miserable excuse of a town - travel along the A40 and hang a right just before West Wycombe, on to the A4010.

There was a RAF base above Saunderton (Lacey Green?) that was 'secret' except for years of convoys of trucks used to cart dirt down and later convoys of readymix concrete travelled up.

It is hard to imagine that even the most short-sighted Russian satellite of those years could miss the desecration of the countryside. All these groundworks scattered around the UK installed at the greatest expense.

In my early work days I worked for a notable company that used to bury VHF transmitter-receivers in the green fields of the UK, all fed through miles annd miles of underground conduits that carried comms and electricity between our underground chambers and the nearest "telephone exchange". These pits had emergency generators, air pumps and antenna - all designed for remote control.

About 16 years ago I happened to be in an area I had worked in and decided on a small diversion. Took some hunting but finally I located the steel doors of one site and the rusted manual release switch and peeped in. All the equipment, even the pneumatically raised mast/antenna, was there but it was obviously powered down.

I wonder just how many other millions/billions pounds lie buried across England? All wet dreams of government done for nought.

You should see RAF Latimer, a few miles away, they didn't even clean the mess up!

Once a closed database, now for sale - typical Tory government

Is nothing private any more? If all this is on sale, why do they restrict the photography in schools or blur children's faces in newspapers.

And what of an opt out clause?

Gove, a new swear word.

London - same old, same old: Paris the historic past preserved

London has been abused; it's skyline a momumental hodge podge of buildings of many heights. London is no longer remarkable, it is simply a copy of so many other world cities.

Paris has restricted the unfettered littering of the skyline, restricting highrises to well defined areas.

Most of Paris's high-rise buildings are located in three distinct areas, which are: La Défense, located in the western inner suburbs in the département of the Hauts-de-Seine; Italie 13, located in the southern half of the 13th arrondissement; Front de Seine, located in the 15th arrondissement.

London? Just wanton desecration, pure sacrilege.

FBI, et al, will demand backdoors

The Ontario Provincial Police pioneered, in Canada, the use of air-bag controls to ascertain the actions of a driver immediately prior to a accident using the data to, in effect, self-convict an at-fault driver. I removed all the circuitry and mounted them in a location disguised as a body component and requiring a hoist for access on my SUV.

In this latest wet-dream, just how 'dead' are systems in Level 2 and above? Are they quiescent but monitoring/recording?

Additionally, it would make a perfect accessory for Plod to actually bring vehicles either to a stop or render them inoperative.

Do we need to give Plod any more powers than they have already?

Pakistan is a natural Client: More the merrier

Since politics and control play an active part in a satellite navigation system, there is little surprise here. Four world systems should be sufficient - Chinese; European; Russian and the USA. It would unlikely all four would be involved in a single 'incident' where they would all degrade their signals concurrently.

As China and India have had ongoing border disputes for over 20 years, likely India will not be a party. And whatever India does, Pakistan often chooses an opposing route.

The USA is not shy in degrading GPS signal, so I say the more the merrier.

Here in Indochina it is common to have at least eight GPS satellites 'in sight', even heavy built-up areas get very usable signals out here.

Now we have to see what the GPS receiver manufacturers responses will be with many, of course, being manufactured in CN. Will they embrace the CN cluster?

What will be interesting to watch if the parties adverse to China in the Spratly Island dispute host ground facilities, I know VietNam has some GPS ground facilities, though they are situated in inaccessible areas or signed as military reservations. (These often have signs in English, too). Indonesia and the Phils would no doubt be useful.

And what of Singapore, China's best buddy out there very close (2 degrees) to the equator?