Posts by Spaceman Spiff

And 2x bad == ?

really, really bad?

And the fix is...

To replace their Lumias with either iPhones or Android phones. I have a Lumia 920 that I got as an employee at Nokia Mobile Phones before Microsoft took them over. Its battery life sucks - a few hours without charging at best, compared to about 3 days on my Galaxy S5 with a similar load.

What now?

So, will Ms. Paltrow raise the salaries of her maids, cooks, and gardeners? Do they make a "living" wage, or are they on food stamps also?

Where there is money

Where there is money, there is graft. It is good to see that ICANN isn't above this maxim... NOT!

To paraphrase The Moody Blues

And thanks to the Great Internet, we are all now digital ink!

Except...

Except those interesting ones that they can exploit to hack our systems! Yes, they will report crap bugs and malware. What do they want with them anyway?

AMEX - better by far!

My wife was hit with fraudulent activity on her American Express card after using it at Target. Fortunately, AMEX is very good at detecting fraudulent activity on their cards, informed her immediately that someone was using her card info to purchase a computer in the SF Bay area, and asked if it were authorized. NO! was the answer. They contacted the police. The perpetrator was arrested with computer in hand. All of this tool a few minutes. She had a new card the next day...

Shotgun vs 9mm

Ok - less range, but more opportunities to hit innocent bystanders!

What, no biometric access?

This is when "modern" systems would support multi-factor biometric access - a palm print and iris scan for example. After all, if it is chip+pin, then I could give the chipped card and pin to someone else and nobody would know until the security videos were reviewed, and maybe not even then.

Good, bad, and ugly

It's good that the 640xl has a replaceable battery, because all Lumias suck at battery life! I have two, and they have to be recharged continuously otherwise they die after a few hours of doing nothing! My Samsung Galaxy 5 and OnePlusOne both run for 2-3 days without needing to be recharged, even when being used constantly. And they charge faster!

Disclaimer: I worked at Nokia Mobile Phones when Microsoft took over that organization, and I and about 12,500 other employees were let go. No joy there!

Generally

Generally, I think that Microsoft.sucks, but I applaud them in this case!

RIght!

Personally, I think that ICANN just .sucks! I think, if it isn't already registered, I'll bid for the icann.sucks domain!

Every system is vulnerable

The only issue is finding the vulnerability. That Ericsson had denied any responsibility is absurd on its face! Security has to be designed in, not added on...

OOB data

After having implemented a complete TCP/IP protocol stack from the DDN white books for a real-time operating system in the early 1990's, a customer (truck engine manufacturer in Indianapolis) found some problems in dealing with out-of-band data. I have "fond" memories of sitting in a little office in a very noisy manufacturing plant debugging and fixing the code. It took about a week of effort, but I was able to nail the problem and make an appropriate fix in our code, which was pushed out to all of our users, including the US Navy.

Huh?

Are we sure this isn't a Michael Caine movie production?

Robotic cats?

Do they catch robotic mice? And I now present to you ... ta da! ... rTom and rJerry!

RIght!

Bell Canada is as dedicated to protecting their customers' privacy as a crocodile is to preserving their food stores - both are meat!

You gotta wonder

You have to wonder what politician or cop these boneheads are related to in order to get such a lenient sentence. Most would spend the next 10 years in durance-vile!

So what happens when?

So, what happens when the government mandates backdoors and access to this data? Guess what? The criminals will be close behind! Here we go again!

I am not saying that the credit card industry doesn't need to incorporate stronger security and encryption - it does. My wife was hacked when Target was pwnd. Fortunately, the card she used was an American Express card, and they are very good at detecting fraudulent activities - someone tried to purchase a computer in Freemont California (we live in Illinois) on her card, and they blocked it, informed the police, and the perpetrator was arrested, computer in hand! My concern is that the attitudes of our current FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA, and other government officials are seriously undermining our efforts to be more secure. This has to stop!

Fraud

This is nothing short of felony fraud! The perpetrators of this "app" should be quickly shown the in-door to gaol!

RIght! That and $5 will get you a nice latte at Starbucks...

So, if I go to a public WiFi spot, connect to a tor server via an obfuscated VPN, and then download this video, who gets the nastygram? Judges who don't understand the tech should not be allowed to preside over or rule in such cases.

Much ado about nothing!

His entire set of bullet points was truly an amazing display of saying absolutely nothing quite verbosely! What an idiot! I think Australia, giving their currently elected representatives, totally deserves him!

When?

When will these idiots (including Feinstein) learn that banning books just reduces us all! What's next? Fahrenheit 451?

This is why

This is why I will not EVER purchase anything from Sony, ever again! In the past, I have had a lot of Sony gear - technologically, they were great devices. Unfortunately, Sony has lost sight that "the customer is always right", starting with the CD root-kit fiasco. So, screw them I say! Vote with your wallet! Don't give them a penny!

First thing

The first thing I do when a new router/modem is installed in my system is to disable remote management myself, if the installer won't do it for me. I think that if they are not willing to, I should cancel the installation and send them on their way, demanding my $$ back!

Days gone by...

Ah, for the days of Cat-5 when all systems were linked with a single co-axial cable!

The DIETY has spoken!

"Thou shalt use free and open source software, when possible!" - key in sound of thunder...

Actually, that sounds good to me! Sometimes you need to use proprietary cruft - all of my software is FOSS except for my software engineering tool Sparx Enterprise Architect. At least the cost is reasonable, and it runs well on Linux with Wine.

I have a deal!

Have I got a deal on hex keys! Cheaper by the dozen! :-)

This is why

This is why running Windows in public systems such as schools, government agencies, etc. is a totally stupid idea! Most such systems allow the primary user Admin privileges. This is not the case with Linux/Unix systems (though giving a user sudo privileges with NOPASSWD option will provide similar access), without specifically allowing such access. Look at all of the cities in Europe that are migrating totally to Linux. Safer. More difficult to penetrate (stupid applications notwithstanding). Linux with SELinux extensions enabled makes it even more difficult to pwn systems like this.

A nice donation?

A couple of million dollars to The Linux Foundation may help, plus a gazillion mia culpas, and ongoing support for the organization at a few $100,000 per year for the next 10 years... This should cause them serious pain, financially, and frankly they deserve it!

To paraphrase (or quote) Forest Gump

Stupid is as stupid does!

Capacitors - caveat observer!

My father, a well-known physicist, once showed me the power of capacitors, and to NEVER point a screwdriver or other pointy metallic object at the big ones! His research equipment had a lot of really big caps, and after grounding himself properly (I was a lad of 12 or so at the time), from 5 or 6 feet away from the gear, pointed a screwdriver at the fully charged capacitors - ZAP! A 6 foot lightning bolt surged from the caps to the screwdriver! I don't know how many watts it was, but if he hadn't taken the proper precautions, he would have been toast!

That was a lesson I have never forgotten.

A minimal IQ?

You'd think that there would be a minimum IQ to qualify one as an MP... Since these are all obviously idiots (IQ < 30), how can we take anything they say seriously, seriously?

Java - not suitable for enterprise applications

I have worked with Java since it was released in the mid-1990's - I got my first cut from James Gosling himself when I presented a paper at an IEEE conference in Boston. I have studied the JVM source code and have done considerable research into garbage collection methods. Java's mark/sweep methods are inherently non-deterministic, hence Java's tendency to have problems with system behaviour and performance when dealing with memory management. At the time I met with Gosling I had finished a deterministic reference-counted garbage collector which after 20+ years is still running many major semiconductor, display, and disc drive plants world-wide. 10+ million lines of code with no deletes and no memory leaks - systems that run on a 24x365 basis. I just wish java systems I have worked on were that reliable!

So, if you want me to work in a Java shop - go find someone else who has a taste for self-flagillation...

What did they leave?

These days, it isn't so much what they hackers took, but what they left on the systems?

How many?

And just how many compromised hard drive controllers do they have in their servers? Pwnd usb devices? Talk about doing the ostrich thing (head in hole)...

And $5usd

This, and about $5USD will buy you a nice latte at Starbucks. Also, if you believe it, I have some futures you can buy in a very nice bridge between Manhattan island and Brooklyn NYC. It's a bit old, but in fine shape...

Insult to idiots.

If I were to call Rogers an idiot, that would insult idiots everywhere. If ANYONE can break into encrypted communications, then it is NOT secure, and everyone can that wants to. Tell this a*hole to first put all of his communications in plain text online for all of us to read. If he is willing to do that, then maybe we'll bare our asses to his probing ministries.

It's time

It's time the Unix/Linux world started migrating to a 64-bit time_t value instead of a 32-bit one for clock settings. Yes, some systems would be borked, but it would not be likely any more severe than Y2K was. That would keep us functional, time-wise, until some time when the sun goes dark and turns into a nova.

If only

If only the NSA would do its job, and protect US government systems, instead of spying on the rest of us, maybe we would have got something for our $500B investment!

Well, it's the NSA - paranoia rules!

Sometimes if you think people are after you, there are!