Posts by Robert Helpmann??

Re: I want to see Cortana vs Siri.

Well, it's really at least Round 2 with the previous round being Google Search versus Bing. I think it is pretty clear who is the winner in that battle.

Re: Internet of Things...

This will lead to a lot of people saying things like, "There oughta be a law..." and there already is, even if it is simply that of natural selection.

Re: £1000?

I'm a bit surprised no-one has suggested an electric cattle fence. Having witnessed the results of an ill-aimed stream, I doubt there is enough alcohol to induce someone to try it twice.

Re: But what happens

With 99.9999% certainty, energy weapons will not move the target they are hitting, as in order to do so, they have to impart so much energy the atmosphere would be set on fire around them.

So what happens if part of the target is vaporized? For example, if it is made up mostly of water as we all are and a given area is brought above the boiling point all at once, couldn't that do the trick of knocking it over?

Pew! Pew!

Re: If the photo is so offensive you can't show us then here it would fail obscenity laws

Tongdaeng is a respectful dog with proper manners; she is humble and knows protocol. She would always sit lower than the King; even when he pulls her up to embrace her, Tongdaeng would lower herself down on the floor, her ears in a respectful drooping position, as if she would say, "I don't dare."

I had to read this part twice before I realized that it was not in fact part of the satire in question. How would one even begin to satirize something like this? It has pretty much got the job done of itself.

Re: Degrees of naughtyness

Or does the term air gapped simply mean a box without a cat5 cable attached?

The writers of the Stuxnet virus would probably disagree... about the air gap part. I doubt they care much about Santa's list.

"Air-gapped" means that the computers in question are not directly connected to outside networks. This does not mean that information cannot be moved to or from them (via sneakernet for example) or that the implementation was without flaw (e.g. it might be vulnerable to cross-talk attack through parallel copper cabling).

Re: F'em

What will they do when we all have a mesh node on top of our houses/in our neighbourhoods and don't need them anymore? Lobby to make them illegal?

That's a trick question, right? The more likely approach is to auction off the frequencies needed to run such networks as it would not require any changes to existing law, would bring more money into government coffers, and would move resources from the public to the private sector.

Re: It all evens out

If you cannot make good off of being one of the first on Mars (assuming you come home), there really is no hope for you.

Re: Yuri definitely knows something the other two do not

He has the same look on his face as I do after having been forced to waste hours spent time in meetings reporting to our leadership things that could have easily been summarized in a five minute email.

Re: Good job they didn't, then....

Those poor souls! Thank goodness they never encountered Ernie and Bert or any of the Wiggles characters. Someone's head would have imploded.

Re: Once

If someone with the ability to use extraordinary rendition and a sense of humor exists (so very unlikely, I know), they ought to grab Assange as soon as the legal process in Sweden was completed and deliver him to the authorities in the UK. It would deliver a debilitating blow to his ego when he realized the US didn't want him after all.

Re: Roll out any version of Fern

Canada now does have two official flags.

At least the Canadians didn't go the route that Oregonians chose to follow: one flag with two sides*. Canadians may have the maple leaf, but Oregonians got the beaver.

* Yes, Paraguay has a two-sided flag, too, but it is completely devoid of beaver.

Re: "my house"

We do not welcome those that make money off China, occupy China's market, even as they slander China's people.

Perhaps lost in translation, but it's not slander if it is true and criticism of the Chinese government is not equivalent to criticism of the Chinese people.

Re: New acronym proposal

I'm sure the manufacturer doesn't encourage users to leave a BBQ/smoker unattended while they head off and rely on monitoring/controlling it over the Internet.

My submission: IoT BBQ POS DIAF!

Re: Bargain hunting?

Verizon already forces its subscribers to upgrade phones on a regular basis by not sending security updates. Imagine what kind of damage they could inflict if they acquired Yahoo!*

* Not really sure where to put the period at the end of that sentence, or if there should even be one.

Re: Hold on...

Also, most hosting firms demand a payment, usually by credit card, that indirectly gives a contact to someone who should about the site and its actual owners... the local goons ... might in a few hours or may be days learn who is the funder, owner, webmaster, etc.

I wonder how easily this would be to circumvent with a prepaid credit card bought at a convenience store. It's an interesting world in which we live. Almost every aspect of our lives can be taken off the grid, if we work at it hard enough. The biggest difference between now and 20 years ago is that doing so today is looking a lot less like paranoia and more like sensible rules for living.

Re: There is another option

Get the software right before shipping it, then updates will no longer be necessary.

Sorry, beyond a simple Hello World app, this is never going to happen. Even code with plenty of eyes on it and much time lavished upon getting it right still has bugs, so this is totally unrealistic. Likewise stigmatizing companies that report bugs in their software is exactly the opposite of useful. There have been too many that have relied on security by obscurity in the past and none have had great success with that approach. To make a similar analogy to the one given, imagine having to drive around with a potentially fatal flaw in your vehicle because the manufacturer chose to hide their error and cover up any incidents that resulted from it.

Everybody makes mistakes, including developers. It's how they are dealt with that matters. What is being advocated here has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked in the marketplace. If what was said was failure to follow a reasonable or a best practices approach to security is deserving of ridicule and penalties, I would be right there with the rest of the mob, throwing rotten tomatoes. But what was given there... not so much.

Re: Interstate Commerce

That would have been "eminent domain" had I been more awake when I posted.

"Commentards hiding behind less open user ids than mine may have different feelings about it!"

Not sure how I feel on the subject given that I am essentially guilty of identity theft because ⇗

Re: School IT .....

Whatever happened to the idea of a staff member at the school actually checking / modifying security settings on any kit they buy?

In my experience, schools do not have well-funded IT departments. In fact, IT tends to be handled at the district level with purchases being handled at the individual schools. This is not the best of starting points.

Re: I'm wondering

Yeah, my first thought was that this would be perfect for mobile man-in-the-middle attacks. Just drop a few of these off wherever targets with low technical ability but who have deep pockets happen to hang out (e.g. Starbucks) and it would pay for itself in no time.

Appropriate Regulation

Thames, you are approaching this from a consumer perspective, which is a valid starting point to be sure though it misses the point. Leaving aside for the moment that different governments have drastically different approaches to consumer protections, consider that "appropriate regulation" is somewhat like hypnotic language in that it means whatever the listener wants it to mean and only when treaties are made do its actual effects reveal themselves. How many governments want to snoop on and control the personal lives of their citizens? As far as I know, the answer is all of them. That's what this is really about, not consumer issues.

Personal Liability

Beyond the 1 year the litigants have to prove the infringement and pay all costs. If they lose they have to pay the other parties the same amount they were claiming.

It will have to be made abundantly clear that it will be the litigants themselves and not some corporate shell that has to pay, otherwise the weasels will squirm out of any sort of responsibility.

Re: can't resist

It's just that Videofied is working to make the Hollywood version of IT come true.

Re: @ Chairo (was:Thailand is the only Asian country never to be colonised)

Who colonized Japan?

Perhaps you should ask the Ainu.

Re: Next time I have a hardware procurement choice....

Suddenly building your own servers is starting to look like a good idea again, if you appreciate actual security and must use Windows.

Or at least creating custom images from scratch and then standardizing on those rather than the canned OS that the manufacturer provides. Unless the manufacturer includes this sort of malware in their equipment's drivers... You are right, cross them off the list.

Both Ways?

The other services you mention do all have functional, and fairly compliant, DMCA-compliant takedown procedures.

I would add eBay to that list. They have a fine tradition of allowing knock-off goods and infringing items to be sold on their site. I don't recall anyone busting down their HQ doors even though they were facilitating the sale of goods that fell foul of the exact same laws that Mega is purported to have broken. This is clearly a case of selective justice.

Re: American prosecutor / Lebanese coder?

...but in the case of the prosecutor, I find it harder to agree unless his suggestion of warrant, in front of a judge or court, showing probable cause, becomes what is required.

In all cases? In all jurisdictions? This is the proverbial bridge too far. Can we simultaneously prevent our political adversaries some foreign, repressive regime from using the tools we want to have for their own goals while allowing ourselves unfettered access to those same resources? Nope. If a skeleton key exists, then the knowledge of its existence is enough to allow someone with enough resources to recreate it. The alternative is to allow potential terrorists to have secure comms. Is that acceptable? Again, no. What to do?

The question seems to come down to, "Do we opt to protect our citizens from hostile state entities or from terrorists?" Solving this dilemma is the main challenge from the perspective of western governments. The two goals are mutually exclusive as stated, so either the question needs to be re-framed or it needs to be answered in terms of acceptable long-term risk (e.g. which is likely to cause the least amount of damage over the next decade).

Re: Come back Sony

Dell said it will post information on how to do this properly on its support website, and future machines will not include the dangerous root CA cert.

However, they did not say what the replacement for this "feature" would be. Car manufacturers have to issue recalls for defective products, but Dell just gets to say sorry and post a self help guide. Yes, yes, it's a case of life and limb vs severe financial impact, but it seems as though Dell's fix is a little less than robust.

Re: That's nothing

Not so much. The Internet as a whole has debunked the myth of monkeys reproducing Shakespeare long ago. In fact, where Shakespeare added words to the language, our fellow online denizens have created emoji, downplaying the need for literacy. Sure, people make poetry with them, but there is really no comparison.

It's not just the grammar, it's the incorrect use of Republican in the context of the story as well as the messy mixing of styles when listing party affiliations and constituencies. I did, however, send a note requesting a correction and acknowledgement of my pedantry.

Re: WTF?

I wasn't confused about it at all and still think it looks a bit like polishing a turd. If there already is a better starting point from which to work, why not use it? NASA might have a particular bias, and the two entities that they chose are definitely not bad choices, it's just that they are decidedly not the best choices. I would have thought that NASA would have learned by now that politics and engineering do not combine well in achieving good outcomes.

Also, if NASA reverses course on this, the next headline could be "Valkyrie gets the SCHAFT!"

Android 6 Permissions

Android 6 (Marshmallow) apps would also require asking users if it's OK to use the Microphone.

Applications written for Android 6 allow you to choose to grant permissions as you install. Those written for previous versions of Android still take the all-or-nothing approach when being installed on an Android 6 device. Once a legacy Android app is installed, users can manually adjust app permissions (they can do this for all apps, in fact). This holds trues for apps that were installed on an older version of Android which was then upgraded.

I bought a Nexus phone knowing that it would be upgraded to Android 6 soon after. I had previously avoided any app that required permissions that I thought were beyond what they needed. With the new phone, I downloaded everything that caught my eye (almost entirely time wasting games), secure in the knowledge that I would be able to whack any unauthorized access. I got the update and went through every app on my phone to set permissions.

First, it was a tedious process as the interface is not meant to be used for more than individual changes (Take note, Google!). Second, I denied all rights for pretty much every app I had installed unless the requested rights had a direct and obvious requirement (e.g. access to location is important for getting directions from your current location). I managed to break two games made by the same company; they seem to think that access to my contacts list is needed to play cards. I also found that many, many apps request "Modify, delete and read storage" rights, but don't actually need them to function. This gives an app permission to access to public folders (e.g. photo gallery). I would guess the apps have control over their own files, but they certainly do not need access to my pics and music.

The ability to control app permissions in Android 6 is a step in the right direction, but it still could do with a bit of polish.

Re: Late to the party, much?

When that speech involves gratuitous beheadings, rape and slavery, my tolerance level is a lot lower.

So what would non-gratuitous beheadings, rape and slavery look like?

Re: Join up your thinking

Yeah Diane tell that to the NRA and the rest of your gun nuts.

I believe she has sent that message quite clearly, but the NRA et al. are not interested in what she has to say.

Re: Well that's a good solution

Are they trying to remove porn by the back doo?

Doctor_Wibble, have an upvote and a virtual drink of your choice for that beautiful, beautiful malapropism!