* Posts by Steve Knox

1972 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2011

Microsoft drops 'risky' Windows 8 preview on World

Steve Knox
Meh

Re: Re: So... slim to none?

First of all, welcome to the internet, Phoenix50. Allow me to be the first to explain to you what we here lovingly call a "troll" (as evidenced by the icon I used in my post): it's a post which is designed first and foremost to generate outrage in those readers naive enough to take it at face value. At least here on The Register some of us are polite enough to warn other readers with such an icon; in the wilds of the world wide web, you'll find lots of trolls who are not so nice.

The entire point of my post was that the above quote can be considered true as long as Microsoft spent as much attention on mouse and keyboard interaction as they did on touch -- no matter how much or how little that quantity is.

I chose the lower quantity for maximum outrage potential (thanks, by the way, for proving my point.)

Steve Knox
Trollface

So... slim to none?

“We paid just as much attention to using Windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard as with touch”

Stop snubbing top scientists' advice, Lords tell MPs

Steve Knox
Boffin

Math:

From the New Scientist article:

"A survey was circulated via the professional networking site LinkedIn, and 365 people responded. Many of them came from the FSS, but the survey also drew 65 responses from private and police labs...[later on:]Of the 21 police scientists who responded, ..."

So 365 total respondents - 65 non-FSS respondents = 300 FSS respondents, or ~82.2%

65 non-FSS - 21 police = 44 private respondents, or ~12.1%

21 police respondents = ~5.8%

(All percentages were rounded up; the values for police and private respondents were just over the 0.5% mark, so combined they would be very close to 17.8%, not 17.9%)

I would not consider 17.8% of respondents to be "a large proportion". However, digging deeper into the numbers does indicate that the non-FSS responders did, in general, agree that closing it would have a negative effect.

"Overall, 92.3 per cent of respondents said they thought the impact of the closure on criminal justice would be mostly negative, while 76.4 per cent said they thought it would lead to an increase in miscarriages of justice."

Since this isn't broken down by respondent type, the worst case we could argue is that it's possible that all 76.4% who though it would lead to more miscarriages were all in the FSS. However, even if we assume the worst, that the 92.3% is mostly from the FSS and the police, that indicates that a remainder of 5.3% of total respondents, or ~43.8% of private scientists, agree. In any case, at least 56.7% ((92.3-82.2)/17.8) of non-FSS respondents believed the impact would be negative.

That's some of the basic math. Now, if you want to get into the statistical validity of a voluntary-response survey administered through a social network, all bets are off.

iPhone photo-slurping loophole sparks app privacy fears

Steve Knox
Boffin

[Citation Needed]

"... Apple's approval process, which is pretty tight, if not foolproof."

Where is the proof of this? Apple's approval process is closed. We KNOW (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/15/apple_rank_hypocrisy_as_privacy_protector/) that it's not foolproof, but Apple doesn't publicly disclose all denials and why they're denied. Nor are app developers looking to snoop likely to admit when Apple has refused approval due to unnecessary snooping. And they're definitely not likely to admit it when a snooping app has been approved.

I'd guess that Apple's approval process is pretty good, but that's a guess and not based on any solid evidence. I'd hope that, as a reporter, you'll have collected such evidence before making such an important conclusion. So can you provide such? Thanks!

Stratfor leak: US 'has secret indictment' of Julian Assange

Steve Knox
Meh

Re: One thing I dont get

There's no real worry -- his lawyers are just using the tried-and-true legal strategy of throwing out anything they think anyone might believe in an attempt to muddy the waters.

The rest of this article is equally uninformative:

I would expect any government which suffered a data breach to attempt to indict those responsible for the breach, and it's not uncommon for intelligence-related indictments to be kept under wraps at least until such time as there is a reasonable chance of apprehending the subject.

I wouldn't expect WikiLeaks to come out with anything other than data supporting their position that the US is after them. A great deal of their cachet comes from convincing others that their paranoia is justified.

And OF COURSE Stratfor is going to make as vague a claim as possible regarding the accuracy of the leaked e-mails. The more public uncertainty about them the better for Stratfor, even if they are fake.

Ten... top Android games

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Typo?

Who's got the typo?

The article reviewed ShadowGun. You're complaining about ShadowRun. Typo, or are you talking about different games?

Windows Phone armed with 'military-grade' email upgrade

Steve Knox

Re: Please no.

Nope.

Windows Phone 7 does NOT offer device encryption. That's why Microsoft is scrambling to get something to convince savvy business users to even consider their OS.

But this is the wrong way to do it. Good is an app, not a device management tool. It encrypts its data, and can remotely wipe its data, but not data outside its domain.

Frankly, I'm surprised MS is doing this, because it takes people away from the Windows Phone apps. They must be getting really desperate.

For those thinking Private Cloud

Steve Knox
FAIL

Subtitle?

Where's the checklist?

Crap mobile networks shamed by Carrier IQ API

Steve Knox
Thumb Down

Says it all.

"It's hard to imagine network operators choosing to share data to that depth..."

yet they were perfectly content to collect others' data to that depth, without even informing them.

Galaxy is teeming with homeless planets

Steve Knox

Re: How do they confirm the planet?

Perhaps by multiple observations of the microlensing event from different sites, followed by a sufficiently long period of no microlensing event, also confirmed by multiple sites?

Crap PINs give wallet thieves 1-in-11 jackpot shot

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: DoB = 6+ digits, PIN = 4 digits

There are 10,000 4-digit numbers, so if your PIN is truly random, there's a 1 in 10,000 chance of guessing it.

However, if your PIN is 4 of the digits of your DOB, in a random order, there are significantly fewer combinations. Given that the numbers are known (since someone's DOB is relatively easy to find), and allowing for a 4-digit year, the criminal only has to choose an order. Allowing you to sort them in any order means the criminal has 8 choices for the 1st digit, 7 for the 2nd, 6 for the 3rd, and 5 for the 4th. This means 8*7*6*5 = 1,680 total choices instead of 10,000.

So giving date of birth the best chance, it's still almost 6 times easier to crack than a random number (10,000 / 1,680 ) ~= 5.95

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: "repeated digits"

While random codes will occasionally lead to repeated digits (for a very simple example, any single digit repeated 4 times in a 4 digit PIN would statistically be expected to appear on average 10 times in 10,000), they would be expected to appear more often in self-selected PIN, because they're easy to come up with and to remember, and people often self-select for convenience.

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: Effectively random?

There has yet to be a fully proven truly random number generator -- primarily because testing to prove a number sequence is truly random is practically impossible*. There are many which are theoretically random (such as hardware random number generators) but they are usually qwuite slow and used primarily to seed a faster pseudorandom number generator rather than to produce final output.

As that is what most computing systems do, pseudorandom numbers from a generator seeded from a hardware random number generator are most likely the source of the PIN generated by your bank. Not truly random, but effectively random.

* There are statistical tests for randomness, but deterministic processes such as pseudorandom number generators can fool such tests. That is to say, a pseudorandom number generator generates a sequence of numbers which appear statistically to be random, but come from a deterministic process, which is by definition not truly random.

Proview wins new Chinese IPAD ruling as Apple threatens to sue

Steve Knox
Flame

RE: Show me a tech company which hasn't?

If Microsoft and Google jumped off a bridge, would Apple do it too?

Seriously, leave the elementary school arguments in elementary school, please.

Microsoft claims Google bypassed its browser privacy too

Steve Knox
WTF?

But But But...!

Didn't Microsoft just say:

"Windows Internet Explorer is the browser that respects your privacy. Through unique built in features like Tracking Protection and other privacy features in IE9, you are in control of who is tracking your actions online. Not Google. Not advertisers. Just you."

And all the while they knew that their browser's default behavior was to pass undefined privacy codes as if they were valid?

And they want to blame Google for their two-faced BS!?

[No, I don't think Google is blameless. This reminds me a little too much of Google's use of BHOs to install stuff in violation of IE's administrative settings. My thoughts on that here: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1098266 ]

Climate models need revising: Droughts, heat waves not such a big deal

Steve Knox

Re: Re: Science - what it's about !

Another missed step:

Journalism - We'll take narrow studies with uncorroborated results, over-generalize the conclusions, and present them fact. This way, we can either a) generate panic in the general populace, or b) assuage people's conscience about the horrible things they do. Fortunately, history has shown that whichever we do, it makes them read/listen/watch us more, which means more money for us!

Steve Knox
FAIL

Re: So...

NO.

THIS PARTICULAR GRASS is resilient. The resilience of other plants/animals was not tested at all by this study.

The key phrase here is : "If these patterns are general across ecosystems..."

Note the "IF". This study has shown that one particular ecosystem can withstand heat waves and drought at specific times. THAT IS ALL.

How Google and Apple exposed their Achilles heels this week

Steve Knox
WTF?

Re: Facebook advertising...

There's a Facebook store!?

FTC tears into Apple, Google over kids' privacy - or lack of

Steve Knox

Re: "Android has had an industry-leading permission system"

That permission could be worded a little better. It's not clear that "Phone" modifies both "state" and "identity". In other words, the permission allows checking the phone state and the identifier _of_the_phone -- not YOUR identity.

This at least indicates why they might be grouped together (common library), even though it would still be nice to separate those two, as the second could be more easily used for nefarious purposes.

Steve Knox
Stop

Re: Needs a "selectively allow" option though.

"There are so many apps that just ask for "everything", and I put many of these down to laziness on the part of the author, not malice."

Well, there's your problem.

Follow that logic through: if the developer is too lazy to identify the access rights their application needs, what other basic development tasks are they too lazy to do properly? "Laziness" is not giving the developer the benefit of the doubt, it's just raising YET ANOTHER reason why you shouldn't install their product.

Apple seeks permission to kick Kodak's corpse

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Re: eengleesh

"Nice to see Apple still wants to make sure they are going to make a return on investment for their R&D....oh wait my bad their filing of patents for everything imaginable."

s/b

Nice to see Apple still wants to make sure they are going to make a return on investment for their R&D -- oh wait, my bad -- their filing of patents for everything imaginable.

Note that "their" is correct as it's possessive (both of "R&D" and of "filing of patents".)

Sorry, Mr. Ball.

Cupertino to ban permissionless address book copying

Steve Knox
Trollface

It cannot be!

"Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines”

But Apple inspects EVERY APP that is submitted to their App Store. How could one that violates their guidelines possibly have gotten through?

Could it be that Apple's "walled garden" is more of a house of cards?

iPad spanks Galaxy Tab in its own backyard

Steve Knox
Thumb Down

@Jim Coleman

As opposed to conversations with the WP7 fanboy, which generally degenerate to:

"I need on-device encryption for me to use this as a business phone."

"The next version will have that." (originally Mango, now WP8 - we'll see...)

"But I also would like to have [insert one of the many other features that Android and iPhone (and even Windows Mobile, FFS) already have]."

"Coming up in the next version. See all the awards we won! Every poll we rigged say we're the best, and any day now the app developers and users will be flocking to our ecosystem!"

CERN boffins to lift LHC beam power

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

What I was going to say!

"In other words, how many barns are your particles going to hit?"

In more appropriate terms, what are the odds that your particles could hit a barn, i.e, broad side thereof?

Apple demands US ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus

Steve Knox
WTF?

Not a bad list, but...

"6) Everyone will overlook anything that casts google in a bad light"

Really? Have you actually read the comments about Google on these forums?

Airport bomb Twitter joker in second fine appeal bid

Steve Knox
IT Angle

Odd that you'd forget...

"supporters include Graham Linehan, writer of Father Ted..."

And a certain other show, what was the name of it again...?

USER-TRACKING Firefox sparks Mozilla civil war

Steve Knox

Chocolate Factory Debate, continued

- No wait, boss...

- Yes?

- Shouldn't we also try to make sure we have their real name, and not just some online pseudonym?

- Good point.

Google's whack-a-mole Marketplace cleans house again

Steve Knox

Another Alternative

Set up a typical profile for each category, including what rights such an application might logically require (e.g, a game could very conceivably need accelerometer access, but "run at boot"!?) and require manual review/approval of apps that go beyond the profile for their category.

This gives you the general openness of Google's Marketplace with some of the security review of Apple's.

2020: A Press Odyssey – reporter licensing explained

Steve Knox

Non Sequitur

Kristian, You can't determine impartiality from a sample set of two. You need a sample set large enough to significantly approximate the mean opinion.

Besides, I'm quite sure spencer's point was about O's selective use of the comments section, not about his impartiality.

Scientists weave battery into clothing

Steve Knox
Boffin

'An entire garment woven from the battery material could produce "hundreds of volts"'

You need to change your weave then. Consumers don't want hundreds of volts; they want 3-12 volts with thousands of millamp-hours. Run those battery fibers in parallel rather than series, come up with a body-heat powered charging system, and you might have a product.

Can Sony's new supremo make the sacrifices to save his biz?

Steve Knox

"If you tell a movie studio to give Sony devices an edge, you invariably damage profit at the studio, and it's not a trivial problem to solve."

More to the point, that's an impossible command. The movie studio produces its best*. It can thereafter decide to cripple the content it provides to non-Sony devices, but that is not quite the same thing as giving Sony devices an edge.

Specifically, consumers tolerate actions that restrict their choice only if it improves their experience significantly. That's the only reason Apple's walled garden has grown (though even that is beginning to show some cracks.) Sony has lost their lead, and so has to either a) learn to play by the rules, or b) come up with something truly revolutionary, as they had done in the past.

Finally, Apple is NOT the company Sony's wanted to become: It's the company Sony WAS (with a slightly different base technology). I hope for his sake that Tim Cook has done a LOT of research into the decline of Sony, because he's going to work very hard to prevent that happening to Apple.

*Within the constraints of technological resources and artistic ability, of course...

Study links dimwits to conservative ideology

Steve Knox
Facepalm

@Matt Bryant

Ah, I see your problem. You're conflating the two most commonly used political dimensions: Fiscal philosophy and social philosophy. There are other dimensions as well (for example, in the US we have centralized vs decentralized (i.e, federal vs state.)), but fiscal and social are almost universal in their applicability to analysis of government figures.

For example, Stalin was indeed a leftist, fiscally speaking, as Communism is an extreme leftist economic philosophy. But socially, he was a conservative. Given the nature of this research, it seems logical to me that that the researchers are referring to social philosophy, and not economic philosophy. But if you have a convincing argument to the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

US tweet deportation: Chilling behind-the-scenes photos

Steve Knox
Alert

Schema Validation Error on Line 1

near '<accent type="american">'

Error 531: "american" is not a valid value for enumeration accent.type. Perhaps you meant one of:

american.canadian.french_canadian

american.canadian.nova_scotian

american.canadian.newfoundlander

american.us.downeastah

american.us.midwesterner

american.us.southerner

fake.uk.stereotypical_american_gay_texan_rancher

or the other 231 accents which contain the text "american"?

Please consult FakeTML Schema Reference Addendum 26, "Exhaustive List of Accent Types (English Language)".

Five ways Microsoft can rescue Windows Phone

Steve Knox

Skype

"Here's one: why exactly is Microsoft licensing Skype? Why is it even tolerating it? It paid a lot of money to acquire this proprietary VoIP messaging platform, and sees no advantage from it. How about raising the fees for Skype for some or all non-Windows mobile platforms? One of the first things Steve Jobs did in 1997 to stabilise Apple was to stop licensing MacOS and kill the clones."

Because although Skype is a proprietary app, it's based on non-proprietary technologies and protocols or there are non-proprietary equivalents. So there's no technological barrier to entry. It's largest market is people who want to connect on the cheap. Raise the price and someone will build their own version and the customers will just leave.

Steve Knox
Thumb Down

WP7 is NOT a business OS

One of the first things they sacrificed to get it out on time is on-device encryption. It still doesn't have it. It's useless for actual business work without it.

EFF helps MegaUpload users claw legit stuff back from Feds

Steve Knox
WTF?

@JEDEDIAH

The government has destroyed nothing in this case. The US government did seize property (as part of a legitimate criminal investigation -- do you believe that should not happen?). Once it had copied the information it was looking for, It returned the property unharmed.

What right has been violated here?

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

@James Smith

I like your analogy. I first balked at comparing MegaUpload to a church, but seeing the religious fervor of some commentards here, I begin to see the resemblance.

Steve Knox
Paris Hilton

@kevin biswas

What kind of bellend trusts Google with their e-mails (the important e-mails, anyway)?

Millions face Megaupload data deletion by Thursday

Steve Knox

@Mad Mike

I did not say they copied ALL relevant data, only that they copied relevant data, and of course the decision of what is relevant was theirs. It's their case. My point was that they are not obligated to copy and preserve data not relevant to their case.

As for trusting BT (or anyone else, even with an ironclad contract) to hold the only copy of my data safe and secure? Don't make me laugh! In the event of a failure, the best you can hope for is monetary recompense -- if they mess up, your data is already gone. That's why backup exists. That's why the adage is "If your data doesn't exist in at least three places, it doesn't exist." I would personally add that at least two of those places should be under your direct control, or they don't count.

I reaffirm: Anyone responsible for data of any importance who decides to store only one copy of it in a location they do not have direct control over, in a storage service open to use (and therefore abuse) to the general public, is INCOMPETENT.

Steve Knox
Mushroom

Am I the only one who READ this article?

1. The servers were on US soil, hence under US jurisdiction.

2. The US Government only copied data relevant to the case.

3. As of right now, NOTHING has been deleted.

4. There are currently no active plans to delete data. However, a payment deadline (apparently) comes up this Thursday, at which point the data could be deleted. BUT:

5. There are ongoing negotiations to preserve the data.

All of this information is in the article, with the exception of the payment deadline, which is a logical inference from the statement that Megaupload can't pay the hosting provider due to its assets being frozen and the statement that deletions could happen as early as Thursday.

Oh, and as a side note, you have this file or set of files that are important to you, so you upload them to some third-party site like Megaupload. And then you delete the originals? Really? The real root cause of any lost data in this case will be the incompetence of the data owners.

World will stay hungry for tablet PCs

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Tablets vs Tablet PCs

"Tablet PC" is a named specification created by Microsoft way back in 2001. It was, and continues to be, received with little to no applause (justly, IMHO).

Current tablets do not in any way meet that specification, even though they do in some ways exceed it.

ICANN responds to smut portal antitrust lawsuit

Steve Knox

@NumptyScrub

Is an excise or VAT tax "trade or commerce"?

What about charitable donations?

Just because someone agrees to give you money, that doesn't make you a business.

And, yes, it is possible for you to register and sell domains without paying ICANN. There are alternate domain systems on the internet. They require client configuration, and so may not have much of an audience, comparatively speaking, but it is possible.

Boffins one step closer to invisible shed

Steve Knox
Boffin

Take a closer look at the graphic.

The third column is free-space -- i.e, the object isn't there to interfere. The interference you see in that column is likely from the mounting framework for the object. Now compare row 2 (3.1GHz) columns 2 (cloaked) and 3 (free-space). What's the difference?

Super-powered 'frankenmalware' strains detected in the wild

Steve Knox
Boffin

"According to the linked post, hybrids have *different* signatures to their progenitors."

No, according to the blog post, a hypothetical situation may occur where AV software disinfects the latest infection, leaving the file with the previous infection(s), but due to a weakness in the disinfection process, the previous infections no longer have the original signature.

This is a) hypothetical only, b) more indicative of a flawed disinfection process than a new danger posed by malware hybrids, and c) not likely to produce a N(N-1) situation because the signature modification happens in the disinfection process, not the infection process. So the more likely number of signatures required would be N(F) where F is the number of distinct (i.e, producing different artifacts) flawed disinfection routines. And the solution is to fix the disinfection routines.

Paramount opens Cloud-based movie shop

Steve Knox
Coffee/keyboard

"I have nothing against DRM per se so long as its an open format..."

Classic!

Laser used to cool semiconductor

Steve Knox

<b>bold</b>

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Well, perhaps they shouldn't trust you...

seeing as it's 4K, not 4°K.

The Kelvin is the unit.

Steve Knox
Happy

Brings a whole new definition...

to a 4K chip!

HP, RIM, ARM among thousands in ICANN dot-brand ban

Steve Knox

@Sir

Should that not be .haitchpee?

The SECRET FACEBOOK OF POWER used by global premiers at G20

Steve Knox
Meh

'Why "social software" is supposed to be better than email, though, is a bit beyond me. '

If I send you an e-mail, it

1. goes from a controlled, secure network (mine) through an uncontrolled, insecure network (intranet) to a possibly- controlled, maybe-secure network (yours);

2. cannot be proven to be received/read; and

3. will likely have size limitations which preclude efficient sharing of large, complex documents,especially with more than a few people.

If, on the other hand, I put you on my secure social network, I can

1. keep the data on a secure, controlled network,

2. monitor what you do or do not read, and

3. ensure efficient storage and sharing of large files.

These are a few of the arguments for a private social network over e-mail. While I know there are mitigation technologies for e-mail's weaknesses, they are generally on the same order of complexity as a private social network; so at that point it becomes roughly a choice of equals.