* Posts by Ru

1818 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jun 2007

Feds slam hacker-friendly backdoors in jalopy, grub factories

Ru

Re: @Andrew Jones 2

If you have a backdoor, you have an avenue for repairs.

Why isn't this back door disabled by default? Why not have a physical 'unbollux' switch on the device to enable it, which must be turned off to resume normal operations? Why is there a common backdoor account for all these devices, instead of single device accounts which would need to be looked up by serial number to gain access? Neither of these are particularly high tech, and neither are particularly sophisticated (the latter has the account database as a single leakable point of security failure) but even these basic steps were not taken. I'm not even a security guy; I'd like to imagine that there are 'best practises' out there that people should really be using by now that are rather better than my ill-informed ideas.

I have minimal sympathy for the vendors. If this is new kit, as opposed to stuff from the Bad Old Days of No Security Whatsoever, it is totally inexcusable as opposed to being just a poor and short-sighted design decision with serious consequences.

'Catastrophic failure' of 3D-printed gun in Oz Police test

Ru
Facepalm

Re: The Liberator - a bargain

Just improvise a slingshot,

They're bloody hard to use. I have a few of various lengths and materials at home, and whilst I'm pretty certain I could hit the broad side of a barn or a crowd of people, I'd be pretty pleased if I managed to hit a human-sized target standing still 10 metres away.

Little crossbows and catapults are vastly simpler to use without huge amounts of practise, or atlatls if you'd prefer to keep it neolithic style. Slings? not so much.

China's exposed crack cyberspy crew dumps 'most' of its kit

Ru
Black Helicopters

Re: How Long

You assume that this is not already happening.

Life on Mars means subsisting on grim diet of turd-garden spinach

Ru
Meh

Re: Timescales

But if we do, what pray tell, what is there to prevent it spreading at an unrestricted speed?

Significant extremes of temperature, exceedingly low atmospheric pressures, all but total absence of water, probable lack of any suitable nutrients, fairly punishing UV and cosmic ray flux, noticably less sunlight for photosynthesis?

The surface of mars is less friendly to life than places like the dry valleys of Antarctica, and there's precious little that lives there despite a billion years for opportunistic organisms to move in, given that they are effectively right next door to a huge and ancient biosphere.

So, if we flew a few thousand tonnes of antarctic rock to mars, landed it gently somewhere relatively sheltered and with a good supply of ice, the occupants might not actually die all at once. That's a far cry from expecting the occupants of a human digestive system to survive and flourish in such an environment.

NASA: Our ALIEN HUNTING star-scan 'scope is KNACKERED

Ru
Mushroom

Re: I hope they can save the scope!

Bring back Project Prometheus, I say.

Acorn founder: SIXTH WAVE of tech will wash away Apple, Intel

Ru

Re: sourgrapes

perhaps that Acorn aren't anywhere in today's computer wars?

He's probably comforted by the hundred million quid he's made since the Acorn days, and the hundred-million and billion dollar companies he's set up or invested in since then.

Ru

Re: My chips are black, or modern slavery

The only problem with this is that as soon as a robot becomes self aware it will have human rights.

This implies that the only form of sentience is one with the same structure and desires as a human; a rather anthropocentric view. Human drives and desires would only apply to an AI which has been designed to have such things.

Oi, Google! Stop LIBELLING us Germans, fix your autocomplete

Ru
Headmaster

Re: Is this a defence?

Interesting point however its not google associating Herr XXX with something nasty, its google reporting that other people are doing the associating.

Is that sufficient to excuse them? As has already been mentioned, if I repeat some slander that some bloke down the pub uttered, even if I prefix it with 'I heard from some bloke down the pub' and suffix it with 'allegedly', I'm could fall afoul of libel and slander laws.

Because Google are allegedly repeating what other people have been apparently asking for, they can claim the usual safe-harbour, communications-carrier type defense, but in return they'd still have to remove the offending material. And that seems quite reasonable to me, though it might not please harder-core free speech advocates.

Ru
Holmes

Re: Is this a defence?

If the algorithm is just based on the most common other searches then they are simply reporting a fact .

Here's a little thought experiment for you... perhaps someone might rent some time on a botnet of moderate size and generate a whole bunch of queries saying "Herr XXX interferen mit kiddies' and make Google's autocomplete start suggesting such things. Would you say that Herr XXX has been slandered in this situation? If so, do you think it is reasonable for Google to associate Herr XXX with kiddiefiddling, despite there being no such link in reality, on the grounds that they're just reporting facts about their search database?

On a semi-related note, I've just had an interesting idea about stock price manipulation. Fun times.

Mystery Sony big-screen ereader to sport E Ink bender

Ru
Paris Hilton

Re: A4

if they're selling a 13 inch Ereader, I'm having it.

Given the vendor, I'll restrain my interest until I know whether I'll need to run some awful Sony crapware to make the thing work at all. If I can push standard ebook format files to it via a standard usb mass storage interface, I'll be happy.

I'm interested mostly because it'll be something I can throw instructions on for dirty jobs... anything where I'm likely to be sticky, greasy or sweaty and might not want (or might not be able!) to get too close to a tiny-screened phone in order to read what I should be doing next, and definitely wouldn't want my PC too neat by...

On the hunt for a new ampere

Ru

I shall assume this is EU sticking it's fat wrinkly nose in again

The Daily Mail is thattaway...

Penguins in spa-a-a-ce! ISS dumps Windows for Linux on laptops

Ru

Re: Fuming

get real work done like using a version of Office that actually works

I'm interested to know what 'real work' you're expecting ISS crew to be doing using Office?

Why next iPhone screen could be made of SAPPHIRE - and a steal...

Ru

Re: Sizes?

There's at least one company who can make transparent alumina slabs which aren't fancy single-crystal ingots. They're not quite as resilient as the higher-quality offerings, but they're cheaper and already available in armoured vehicle window sizes.

Ru

Re: Fixed @ skelband

I'm still a bit confused: what are the "slags" being hunted for in this instance?

What might look like a common slag to the unitiated may in fact be a valuable ore, and worth a penny or two to the pimp prospector who stakes an appropriate claim and has a client in mind with suitably niche tastes.

Ru

Re: So

No - it's you Brits and we Australians who can't spell it. It's aluminum

IUPAC prefer -ium, and its kinda their bailiwick.

Some of your scientists decided to change it just so it'd fit in with other "ium"s.

Like molybdenium, lanthanium, tantalium and platinium? Certainly, their efforts at consistency were pretty half-hearted.

Fighting Fantasy and fantastic fights in tights

Ru
Gimp

On explanations.

That still doesn’t explain why Superman doesn’t simply throw the human protagonists into the cold depths of space

I draw your attention to Exhibit A.

3D printed gun plans pulled after US State Department objects

Ru
Trollface

Re: Next week

Dont they teach metalwork in schools any more?

Nah, too dangerous.

Ru

One bullet at 30,000 feet can do a whole lotta damage

Substantially less than you might expect. Planes don't pop like balloons when punctured, aircraft controls aren't made of Hollywood-grade explosive materials, people don't get sucked through pinholes like Goldfinger, there's more than one guy who can fly the plane and probably a handful of people who'd be prepated to sacrifice themselves to prevent another 9-11 style incident.

Apologies for wikipedia references, but they'll suffice for the impatient:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_30

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

Ru

Ultimately, for $1000 of plastic you're better off making a simple object that won't go wrong

The $1000 figure largely relates to the way commercial 3D printer manufacturers pad their profit margins. See also: price of inkjet cartridges. Laser sintered nylon powder or extruded ABS is likely to be a fair bit cheaper.

In terms of concealability, a sharpened toothbrush would be more effective, not to mention cheaper and have a similar range to the liberator.

Firstly, remember that this is effectively a tech demo. Things will only get nastier. Secondly, remember that there are a few things that even a little rimfire bullet can do better than a small blade, such as penetrating light obstacles such as window glass or thin doors. It can also be used out of arms reach, or behind a bystander, or from another vehicle. Thirdly, just because this model is one shot, it doesn't mean that it isn't trivial to make a multiple-barrelled one like a pepperbox pistol or some kinds of derringer.

Tesla earns first profit, Model S wins '99% perfect' rating

Ru

Re: Battery tech is still not there yet...

I don't see why electric cars cannot be designed to accept a simple lawn mower engine, which could be dropped into a generator housing by the owner

See also: series hybrid vs parallel hybrid electric cars.

The Volt/Ampera has a purely electric drivetrain (albeit with some slightly curious dual motor stuff) and a combustion-engine driven generator. Compare this with the Prius, which I believe can be run using the combustion engine alone (using a similar dual motor setup).

There are some more interesting (and exotic) things on the drawing board too... there's a Brit company (Bladon Jets) who have a very small gas turbine engine design, and a couple of fancy series hybrid concept car ideas have been based around using such things as generators. Much more interesting than piston engines, and rather more versatile too! Too bad it will take a good few years more for that sort of tech to trickle down into the sorts of vehicles normal people can afford.

Apple's head bean counter boasts WORLD'S BIGGEST PACKAGE

Ru
Pint

Like bistromathics, but more profitable.

The name "Safra Catz" has a wonderfully H2G2 ring to it, too.

Don't use Google+? Tough, Google Glass will inject it INTO YOUR EYES

Ru
Facepalm

Re: Like it much ?

as well as reporting crash status codes back to Google.

Crashes, eh?

Error code 0x00015502: user walked into door whilst checking email.

First, the bad news: EA bags Star Wars games rights

Ru
Facepalm

if they hired George Lucas to script and direct whole the game.

You are trolling, right?

Cos George had to contend with a lot of other folk when the first 3 films came out... lots of strong willed and clever staff and actors, who often pushed things in directions he didn't like at all.

Fast forward a few decades to when he's jolly rich and all powerful and gets to do what he likes, with his vision unimpeded by the plebs. We get the prequel trilogy, and shortly thereafter the 'retroactively shat-upon' editions of the original set.

EA working with Lucas on a new game would be pretty much the nadir of the whole franchise.

VTOL hybrid flying car promises the skies

Ru

Re: Hybrid gyroplane?

I trust you've heard of the PAL-V?

Bit more convenient to park than the Terrafugia, and I'll bet it has a shorter runway requirement, too.

Russian geologist claims finding chunks of Tunguska Event invader

Ru
Black Helicopters

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

I heard it was the final test firing of Tesla's wireless energy transmission system before J P Morgan pulled all funding by order of the Papal Illuminati. Claims of alien meteorites are exactly the sort of coverup story you'd expect, under the circumstances.

10-day stubble: Men's 'socio-sexual attributes' at their best

Ru
Windows

Re: Beards are Best?

Beards add years to your age

I don't think the relationship is purely additive or linear. A gentleman of my acquaintance first started sporting a beard in his late teens, and rapidly ended up looking like he was in his thirties... and has stayed looking more or less the same age, and is now actually in his late thirties

If he actually stoops so low as to dye his hair and beard, I expect he'll carry on looking much the same for the next couple of decades, too.

Google Glass eye-cam to turn us all into right little winkers

Ru
Paris Hilton

Re: RE: Question for luddites.

There's something fundamentally deviant about the mind of the head of Google if you ask me.

Miniaturised cameras are not new. Perverts are not new. Google is not enabling them here... there have been numerous incidents of people hiding cameras inside shampoo bottles and then leaving them in shower areas at gyms and swimming pools, for example. "Won't somebody please think of the perverts?" is not a good arguement against these glasses, because if those folk want to do some covert video recording, they already can and probably already do.

Ru

Re: Welcome to the parallel surveillance society

Some police already wear shoulder cams - protesters aren't always without guilt.

At least now there will be no argument about quis custodiet, etc... it can and should work both ways.

Fraudster gets ten years after selling fake 'ionic charge' bomb detectors

Ru

Re: 60 MILLION?!!!

It will be interesting to see if the folk who authorised the purchases will be prosecuted too. Clearly they were in on the scam... at the very least, if they can't be prosecuted for their blatant corruption, they're clearly guilty of gross negligence.

Apple: You thought Google dodged taxes? Get a load of THIS

Ru

Re: @reno79

But Apple was never involved in innovation - they had some nice design, yes, but Apple is really a marketing company.

By those standards, surely no-one has innovated in the computer field since the 80s.

I'd argue that good design is very much a valuable innovation in and of itself. I have never owned an Apple product and I don't anticpate doing so any time soon, but it would be remiss of me to suggest that they've not had a substantial (and largely positive) impact on the technology I generally use. The fact I don't particularly like their products or their policies is orthogonal.

The IPhone? a PalmPilot crossed with a mobile phone

I'd go further than that and suggest it was crossed with a second rate mobile phone. No 3G, after all. Nonetheless, it was a substantial step up from its Symbian and Windows Phone driven contemporaries, and has basically driven the design of every smartphone since then. I certainly don't want to go back to using devices with pre-iphone interfaces, do you?

The iPod? - less original than the iPhone really

I don't particularly care for the iPod, but it did drive the creation of the first serious online music store with (more or less) world wide reach, with the result that the big and compacent Big Media companies finally had to sit up and pay attention to modern technologies instead of trying to step on them. Bit of engineering, lot of marketing, but ultimately they created something that no-one else had managed, and everyone one else has benefitted, no?

Ru
Facepalm

the bonds will be issued through Goldman Sachs

Well, if you can't trust the giant vampire squid clamped to the face of humanity, who can you trust?

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Ru
Thumb Up

I'd not heard of Ninite before... I'm feeling a bit out of touch now that I'm a dev rather than an admin. Thanks for the heads up!

Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack forms foraging party

Ru

Cep mushrooms are jolly nice. My experience has been that in the areas where they might be found, you'll often find some locals who are keener than yourself and prepared to get up much earlier to hunt em down leaving you with nuffin... but you never know. Good luck!

Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack in bullet-hard chickpea drama

Ru

In the uk pidgeons were fair game although not hugely economical to hunt

They're startlingly unappetising to prepare, as their body fat tends towards a lovely yellowy-green colour. City pigeons also eat an awful lot of nasty stuff, so I'd avoid them myself.

Apparently grey squirrel is quite tasty

I've eaten squirrel before. I can't recommend it... I imagine that really good squirrel tastes as nice as low quality bunny. I suspect that the correct way to serve it is as a strong, hot curry, as that might hide the 'flavour'.

Science of the lambs: Boffins grow GLOW-IN-THE-DARK sheep

Ru
Boffin

Re: So wait

Just the skin, as far as I'm aware. You may recall a recent brouhaha over glowing bunnies... the real thing woudl have glowing skin but not fur, and the pictures of the supposed glowing bunnies showed an even all-over glow. Have a look at the (hopefully) relevant wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein.

I'm assuming that the protein is either not expressed by follicle cells, or is not stable over the long term so any fluorescence in hair would only appear at the very base, and older parts of the hair would appear boring and normal.

Move space junk with laser shots

Ru

Re: Disintegrators

We've got these Electro Arc metal disintegrators in our prototyping shop & I've often wondered why those couldn't be used to eliminate space garbage

Cos you've got to be ablto put your disintegrator in close proximity to each piece of junk. This requires getting a spacecraft up into a fairly close orbit and giving it some quite precise manouvering capabilities and a big delta-v reserve. This is what is known in the trade as "very, very expensive".

If you can get that close to litter, you'd be better off bagging it and then throwing the bag, or yourself, down into the atmosphere when you're finished. There are other projects in existence which are trying to do exactly this.

assume that what you call "disintegrators" are what I know as plasma cutters,

I was thinking more along the lines of plunge EDM machining (you can get simple ones for destroying broken taps and bits in expensive workpieces), but perhaps you're right. In either case, stuff might be 'disintegrated', but it ain't annihilated.

Anyway, plasma cutters in space are more correctly known as "rocket engines", so they'd be a jolly inconvenient tool to use. EDM needs a dieletric fluid to work, too... not an easy thing to handle when you're squirting it out into a vacuum under microgravity!

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

Ru

is there a way to make a watermark that's not obvious, but is still there when meta data has been stripped?

I know Digimarc have been offering a reasonably robust imperceptible watermarking service for some time now; possibly there are other similar companies out there. It isn't a trivial task, unfortunately.

Texan stitches stratosphere into stunning panoramas

Ru

Re: I wish...

So could you lift a small firework sized rocket on a balloon and launch it up there would it escape?

If you take the little firework rocket far enough away from earth, eventually the pull of gravity will be so weak that it will be able to exceed escape velocity and escape.

That said, escape velocity at low earth orbit is still a good 5km/s higher than orbital velocities - a challenging delta-V for firework rocket of any size, given its likely specific impulse - even if you could get a balloon to LEO, which you clearly can't.

CURSE you, EINSTEIN! Humanity still chained in relativistic PRISON

Ru
Happy

Re: Time travel

Have a quick read of WIki History by Desmond Warzel for an entertaining view on timetravel.

Ru

Re: Gravity Propagation Question

The speed of gravity is apparently finite... I believe that's been known for some time. Newton thought it was infinite, but apparently observations of Mercury's orbit in the mid-1800s showed that the planet's behaviour could not be explained by purely Newtonian physics.

Modern work on the actual speed of gravity is pretty arcane. Current theories suggest that it isn't any faster than the speed of light, but the related papers are well beyond my ability to understand. Good luck ;-)

(also, "The force you impart to the rod propagates through the entire rod much faster than light speed"... really? if that were true, we wouldn't be arguing about the existence of superluminal physics still!)

Ru
Boffin

Re: Stupid question

If I had a metal rod 100 million miles long sitting in a frictionless universe

A frictionless universe won't help you here. Instead you'd need an incompressible rod... not something you can make out of normal matter (see also: black holes). You push the end of the rod, you generate a compression wave, and that will travel at a finite speed even in incredibly dense material (do a quick search for 'speed of sound in neutronium', for example).

Now, I Am Not A Theoretical Physicist, but I rather suspect that you could only manufacture the required massless and incompressible rod if you already had some sort of superluminally propagating force, making it a bit of a circular argument!

DARPA looks for a guided bullet with DEAD reckoning navigation

Ru

Re: Still a Bullet?

and if it hits me I'll care even less...

You are of course assuming that the intent is always to kill.

Another blow for Flash as Unity gaming engine kills support

Ru

Re: Good Riddence

But taking a cut because somebody used your language is more like Microsoft charging $399 for VS (or whatever it costs) and then tacking on a charge to every piece of software you sell that was made in VS.

Well, what do you think Windows Store will do in the longer term?

On the flip side, VS Express is a reasonable IDE and is freely available, so it isn't all bad news.

Your phone may not be spying on you now - but it soon will be

Ru

Re: Smash it with a hammer now, it's the only way to be sure.

Please can you advise what I can do to improve matters

Have you tried holding it differently?

World's first 5mm-thin gyrating models paraded on disk catwalk

Ru
Holmes

World's First?

I'm not totally certain that's true, if 'thin' and 'single platter' are the only requirements,

Anyone else remember the old IBM Microdrives? I've no idea if they were single platter, but I rather suspect they were. I have an old Hitachi version of the same lying around somewhere, maybe I should pop it open and see.

Java still vulnerable despite recent patches

Ru

Re: If you can't create tech, criticize it

There's nothing at all wrong with having Java installed on a system. It's one of maybe a dozen execution environments that are on a typical machine

This. The underlying message is, "executing untrusted turing complete code from random places on the internet may be hazardous for your computer", which isn't much of a surprise.

Sandboxing Java hasn't really been a viable technique for some time now. Java plugins have been disabled by default in the browsers i generally use (FF and IE) for some time now. It isn't the fault of Java that some people will simply download and run any old thing regardless of its provenance... if it isn't Java, they'll happily do the same with malicious PDFs, for example.

Google's teeny UK tax bill 'just not right', thunders senior MP

Ru

Re: Can we check one thing?

Maybe she's not the best person to cast the first stone

You feel that hypocrisy is the worst of all possible offenses, and to have engaged in it in the past makes someone ineligible from ever pointing out the deficiencies of another? That's an interesting point of view.

ICO probes Home Office refusal to reveal Snooper's Charter details

Ru

Re: back to basics

Surely the UK agreed to CCTV and national databases in principle a long time ago

No.

And they're off: Hubble, Herschel race for hot pics of space filly

Ru

Have a search for some older pictures of the nebula, taken with less capable cameras and telecopes. The resemblance is a little stronger.

BadNews, fandroids: MILLIONS of Google Play downloads riddled with malware

Ru

Re: Android permissions design

I've always been disappointed that you can't drop demanding applications in a sort of sandbox... as it stands, when I see an application that has unreasonable demands given its purpose, all I can do is simply opt not to install it and find an alternative.

I'd much rather put it in a nice padded room where it can be convinced that it really is reading my contacts list and erasing files from my operating system and perhaps most importantly feel that it really is sending premium rate text messages when in fact not one of these operations has a single side effect.

It isn't much of a safety net, but it would help make the current android permissions system slightly less worthless.