* Posts by Dazed and Confused

2385 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Sep 2007

Let's talk about that NSA Diffie-Hellman crack

Dazed and Confused

Re: Re. Primed

> At the risk of being pedantic, that's not actually true...

You are of course correct Vic, and not just for "tells" traffic analysis also makes massive use of signals that you can't read. These were lessons that Bletchley taught the military and the powers that be got all snotty with Gordon Welchman when he told the world.

Dazed and Confused

Re: Re. Primed

As sometime above signs off their posting "...for now"

This is always the guiding principle when it comes to encryption.

The military only needed encryption to be good enough that the information was no longer of strategic value by the time it was decrypted. A signal that tells an artillery battery to open fire in 5 minutes is fine to send out on a code system which can be broken in 6 minutes time.

But these things need to constantly reviewed, once the enemy can crack the code in sub 5mins you need to be prepared to upgrade your system.

This seems to be where so many crypto systems break down. People expect their encryption tech to last, well they won't. WPA2 is now over 10 years old, how many "Moores cycles" does that give us?

Any encryption system based on mathematical tricks should come with a maximum life time and mandatory reviews. Moores law talked about 18 months, so don't expect to go any longer than that before seriously reviewing things.

UK drivers left idling as Tesla rolls out Autopilot in US

Dazed and Confused

Re: "We’re not totally clear how the car intends to deal with being rear-ended"

Of course here there would be the interesting situation that Jack the lad (or Jacky the Laddette) sees a Telsa approaching in the wing mirror (OK it's on the door these days) and jinks right to cause the Telsa driver spit their coffee as the Telsa's automatics pull an emergency stop. They hit the brakes far faster than any human driver could and so the car behind doesn't have time to react -BANG. OK, so the car behind was still too close but you've still been hit.

Dazed and Confused

Re: Parallel parking

> Or as real men call it, parking.

Real men don't need no automatic parking system, they use the hand brake.

Of course if you really want to be macho about it you'd use the throttle and oversteer into the space.

Drunk driver live-streams her slow journey home

Dazed and Confused
Joke

Re: I'll give you my steering wheel...

That's OK, you can keep the steering wheel. :-)

‘Insufficient evidence’ makes Brit cops drop revenge porn probes

Dazed and Confused

Re: May not be me after all

Or it is proving difficult to pin the case on the ex. It's so easy to get a reasonably anonymous Internet connection or SIM. So they BiB can see the picture out there, they can talk to the website, assuming they are in the right jurisdiction, get the IP address where the pics come from, go to the ISP/mobe company. And then what? They were posted from Joe's Cafe free WiFi a couple of hundred miles from where the ex lives? Now what are they supposed to do?

BBC bypasses Linux kernel to make streaming videos flow

Dazed and Confused

Re: Moving out of the kernel to improve performance?

> 1. A userspace driver has to go through the kernel every time it tries to access the hardware

This isn't necessarily the case. If the kernel can map the address space of the device into the virtual addresses space of the userland process there is no reason why the HW shouldn't be accessed from userland. Interrupts however are a different matter. I doubt you can safely run userland code from the ICS.

Dazed and Confused

Re: Zero copy?

If my grey cells haven't gone too grey then I think HP-UX implemented zero copy network stacks about 18 years ago. I suspect that it was just zero copy inside the kernel but still copied in and out of user space from the system call entry/exit functions. HP-UX wasn't the only one. The 2007 implementation of sendfile should allow sharing of the buffers between user space and kernel space using page aliasing. I don't know the intricacies of the x86 MMU but I guess it isn't using a global VAS and so this should be easier.

Miss Brittany dethroned for posting 'nude' Facebook pics

Dazed and Confused

Re: Double standards?

Because when you enter their contest they own your body.

Fiorina: I rushed out HP servers to power NSA snooping. Mwahahaha!

Dazed and Confused

Keep on wrecking

> So not only did she wreck HP, but she also

So not only did she shaft HP while she was there, she's determined to continue to shaft HP now that she's gone.

NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Dazed and Confused

Re: It'll be a rock

> Of course, a rock--but with fossil.

Nah it's dust, but it's dust with a boot print with the words

Made in China

clearly visible in relief

Bletchley Park remembers 'forgotten genius' Gordon Welchman

Dazed and Confused

Re: Please can we keep the accolades coming...

> Walchman's book 'Hut Six...' is already $999+

Given the interest there is now about Bletchley Park I'm sure it must make sense to re-print this book. Or is that still banned?

Besides if they re-printed it I could have a copy (or two).

VW: Just the tip of the pollution iceberg. Who's to blame? Hippies

Dazed and Confused

Re: Grr...

> Veagan eating HIPPIES

I never realised that hippies were allowed to eat vegans.

Suppose they have to eat something.

Dazed and Confused

Re: Well DUH!

But cats don't like to get too hot, OK so it's been a few years since I looked at the figures but to get cats to last longer than a tank of fuel the engine needs to run a touch richer than the peak for power production. I can't remember the changes it foisted on us, but the stoichiometric ratio was buggered around with. Not running quite so hot results in less NOx.

FOUR STUNNING NEW FEATURES Cook should put in the iPHONE 7

Dazed and Confused

Re: b) Most people never upgrade their storage?

I can't speak for most people but I've always tended to expect to upgrade storage on phones (and laptops) at least once during the life of the device, Same with the kids, they fill their SD-Cards, it's cheap to buy a new one. Since outside of the Apple world the price of flash is in free fall when the phone is a year old you can usually buy an SD-Card of twice the capacity and at half the price, this seems a no brainer. Switching from one phone to another is just too much shag and hassle.

DRIVERLESS cars: Apple ups the ante with meeting in California

Dazed and Confused

Else ambulance chasing lawyers will be sold the personal details of upcoming accident victims.

More like

"Else ambulance chasing lawyers will be able to choose the upcoming accident victims based on there personal details" He's rich I'll crash him into one of my clients.

Our cookies save you from TERRORISTS, Facebook thunders to Belgian judge

Dazed and Confused

When Global Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Simon Deadman walks into a court room do people say 'deadman walking' !!!!!!!

I understand the judge has bought a very natty black cap just for that very joke.

Get that OFF dot-com, hysterical France screeches at Google

Dazed and Confused

Re: If I were running Google

> No, France, you can't tell Google what to do outside of France.

Well the US likes to tell people outside the US what to do.

But where will this all end? Should China be able to say what political websites should be allowed? Should the Saudi's be allowed to outlaw French wine production.

This whole pile of smelly stuff needs resolving in an international arena, letting individual judges decide foreign policy isn't ever going to have a happy ending.

RFID wants to TRACK my TODGER, so I am going to CUT it OFF

Dazed and Confused

Re: They'll RFID condoms next

. I'm sure someone will want to know where they're used. Now if they could tag the woman...

It's very unPC to use women

Dazed and Confused

Re: Don't cut

Unstitching the labels and then resowing is going to be a mega pain in lots of materials.

I've noticed when buying undies for the other half that there is often a lot more material in the labels than there is in the garment. It quite spoils the whole effect. Trying to cut the stitching out without the whole garment collapsing would be nigh on impossible. Re-sowing the fine silk tulle or lace is quite beyond my basic needle work skills. It's so infuriating when you buy beautiful soft items of clothing for them to come totally spoilt by this label vandalism.

I think the answer to to have a legal requirement for the manufacture to offer a service where they'll remove these accursed things.

Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux

Dazed and Confused

Re: They didn't have much choice.

> Redistribute and you play by the GPL. Internal use only, you're good to go.

But they'll be intending to sell this, it won't just be an internal use thing.

Dazed and Confused

Re: They didn't have much choice.

> That's one of the reasons it's called "free software".

Except it isn't really free, it has a license and the license doesn't allow you to just borrow the interesting bits of code, see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/05/vmware_sued_for_gpl_violation_by_linux_kernel_developer/ . Sure they can reverse engineer from the source code, which makes it much easier but they'd still need to work out how it all worked and then code their own design while being careful to ensure that what they wrote didn't fall foul of the license. Microsoft are very keen on SW licenses.

Dazed and Confused

Re: Windows 11

> means that systems are up and running amazingly quickly.

While this is true, for most server folk it is also not very relevant. Most Linux servers get rebooted once in a blue moon. Besides modern HW seems to spend so long in FW initialization that any time saved in the init -> login time window is lost in the time outside of the SW authors hands.

I appreciate the speed of RHEL7's (as an example) startup, but it's still slower than a few year old box booting RHEL6.

There are other ways to parallelize start up without flouting every tenant of Unix/Linux SW design (do one job, do it well) in particular and just good design principles in general (write down what you are trying to achieve before you work).

Dazed and Confused

Re: See? Even Microsoft are switching to linux.

I wonder when they'll sue themselves.

I also wonder whether they'll finally tell themselves which patents they are infringing.

The ONE WEIRD TRICK which could END OBESITY

Dazed and Confused

Re: Yes but, no, but...

> Up North where they use special hardware to make sure of a nice creamy head,

It can be done with the wrist action too. I once amazed a visiting team by pulling pints of IPA alternately with heads and no heads depending on the accent of those that had said they wanted a pint of it. Prejudice I realise but I was quite happy to change the style on request.

Dazed and Confused
Flame

Re: Yes but, no, but...

I was just about to up vote you then you said

> (in straight pint glasses of course)

New flangled things.

Proper beer in a proper glass is what I say. None of these Noniks or conical things, Jugs are what we need!

Oh sod it, have an upvote anyway for highlighting a major problem.

Mind there is a bigger one, the reverse of the travesty you mention, I got given some beer glasses (not proper jugs) recently only to discover they are 500ml and so a pint won't fit!

Dazed and Confused

Re: craft it smaller

> Well, we drink halves too. It's just that there's two of 'em in a pint glass simultaneously.

I remember a particularly drunken rugby club bar staff tour (look the players go on tour at Easter why shouldn't the bar staff OK) to Holland where we horrified to find beer being sold in 25cl glasses. But it was OK, I quickly worked out how to hold and 2 in each hand and be able to drink out of either of them, so it was all right.

'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker...'

Dazed and Confused

What next

making it illegal to put the kettle on in ad breaks on telly?

BAN the ROBOT WHORES, says robot whore expert: 'These AREN'T BARBIES'

Dazed and Confused
Happy

Re: If your sex robot has achieved actual self awareness

Does this remind anyone else of the cow from the TV version of the Restaurant at the end of the Universe?

IPv6 is great, says Facebook. For us. And for you a bit, too

Dazed and Confused

To NAT or not to NAT

> However, having a directly addressable IPv6 implementation doesn't mean everyone can access your computer. Firewalls can still block connections that you haven't initiated. It's still better to use IPv6, because the vast address space makes network management much, much easier.

While it is true that you can firewall IPv6 addresses to stop direct access, NAT (OK SNAT) has the feature of being client only by default. In a NAT environment it is difficult to actually make it possible for the BBI (Big Bad Internet) to gain access to your system, whereas in an IPv6 directly routed by screened by a firewall then you're dependent on the correct configuration of the FW, so it tends to be open by default with an option to guard the door.

There are lots of things which will work better by not having to fight with NAT, but security has been a very big unintended benefit to the world using NAT.

BORN to HURL: Man's shoulders are head and shoulders above apes, gorillas, chimps etc

Dazed and Confused

Re: Gorillas?

> Aye - I'd have also thought that the huge strength advantage would negate any technical disadvantage

It would probably allow the gorilla to throw a ball 10 times the weight of a human, but not necessarily with 10 times the speed of release.

Of course bowlers in cricket have to use a very inefficient action, they're not allowed to chuck the ball using all the joints to generate a whip like action.

Heigh ho, oh no! Politically correct panto dumps Snow White’s dwarfs

Dazed and Confused
Joke

I'd have thought

That if they wanted to be all PC about it calling the lead character "Snow White" smacked of blatant racism.

US gov to Apple: COUGH UP iMessages or FEEL our FEDERAL FROWN

Dazed and Confused

Also in the news

Judge orders King to stop tide

Ashley Madison: ‘Our site is full of women, and members are growing’

Dazed and Confused
Paris Hilton

Re: Get A Skype Account

The dumb thing is that they all look far to attractive to want to be my friend all of a sudden.

If they stopped using photos of models they'd probably get a better hit (on) rate :-)

(PH angle? I've have a so called PH want to be my friend on Skype)

T-Mobile US CEO calls his subscribers thieves, gripes about 'unlimited' limited tethering

Dazed and Confused

Since when

Did an "All you can eat" buffet allow you to bring your family along to join in to?

Normally I'd be with you on an "unlimited Internet connection" but for a phone contract? All the phone can eat unlimited seems reasonable, tethering is like bringing you mates along too and expecting to feed them as well for the cost of one meal.

I've no idea how T Mobile in the US sells this service.

In the UK I've got an unlimited contract with 3 and I was clearly told that this was unlimited in terms of use by the phone and that I was only allowed something like 4GB of tethering, which seems fair. Data contracts for tablets and mobile WiFi gadgets cost more than the phone contract. I guess there is a reason for that. My youngest son who has the same contract still manages to push 100GB/month on his phone.

Google watchers react furiously to ad flinger’s competition case defence

Dazed and Confused

Re: Fact is, its not hard to find your favorite seller in any given set of search results

I've never once asked google to tell me who can tell me who sells anything.

I've asked google who sells things and they've answered.

If I requested that google give me search sites and they only listed their own then I'd be miffed. If I ask them who sells something and they only listed the names of other people who could tell me I'd also be miffed.

Apple's AirDrop abused by 'cyber-flashing' London train perv

Dazed and Confused

Re: WTF?

> ..and it's Apple wot's about to undun it as soon as Apple can get its shit together.

not if they can find a way to monetize letting companies push ads to your phone they won't. They sell it as being a feature.

Sex app Tinder in public meltdown – because a journo dared suggest it was, well, a sex app

Dazed and Confused
Angel

Re: The sort of flirting that happened 40 years ago - especially at work

> The sort of flirting that happened 40 years ago - especially at work - would now be likely to be deemed sexual harassment.

I'd certainly not be married to the love of my life for the last 25 years if she'd not been allowed to chat me up at work all those years ago.

See Unix engineers can have social skills and chat up people of the opposite gender.

UK.gov issues internal 'ditch Oracle NOW' edict to end pricey addiction

Dazed and Confused
Happy

Re: remotes

> Ok so LO is not perfect - but

then neither is Office where every new release is worse than all the previous ones and all the bits that you used to use have now either been hidden, broken or both.

Wait, what? TrueCrypt 'decrypted' by FBI to nail doc-stealing sysadmin

Dazed and Confused
Happy

Re: yes

> 1 really long C0mpl3x P@55wOd!, if I even got it right, is vulnerable to dictionary attack.

Not when you spell as badly as I do

OFFICIAL SCIENCE: Men are freezing women out of the workplace

Dazed and Confused

Re: Temp difference also matters

When I started travelling extensively and visiting offices in lots of parts of the world I found it was always worth taking a range of office suitable clothing with me. There seemed to be a tendency, especially in the US (but not only) to set the inside temperature to be the opposite of the outside one. Phoenix in summer? office would be 18, Chicago in winter? office likely to be at least 25.

Linus Torvalds warns he's in no mood to be polite as Linux 4.2 drags

Dazed and Confused
Coat

intelligent ...

>>more intelligent computer users

>Are they like more intelligent bosses?

Sure no one has ever found enough samples for a valid comparison.

Assessing the power of Intel’s SSD 750 … but check your motherboard before buying

Dazed and Confused

Re: 32.23MB/s for 4K random reads is disappointing

This is an attempt to get away from SATA as that is part of the performance problem, it will never be able to offer good performance for SSDs.

Apple chief Cook cooks up rumours after BMW car talks, factory tour

Dazed and Confused

Re: Would you trust ANY Americans in your factory?

Unlike Apple who'd never make anything in the US let alone in Germany.

Much better to pay someone else to make your stuff in the lowest cost production centre they can find.

Antitrust this! EU Commish goes after HOLLYWOOD’s big guns

Dazed and Confused
Happy

Stating the obvious

Big film studios do deals with national broadcasters that limit, by country, where films can be broadcast. Vestager believes that such licensing agreements restrict access, limit cross-border competition, and are a form of anti-competitive price fixing.

Yes, that is exactly what they are designed to be.

How long it's taken till now for those in power to notice?

Doesn't just apply to films. How about all forms of electronically distributed entertainment. Wouldn't effect me personally, but how about sport?

This isn't a new issue. I remember back in the mid 70s going to a judo competition near Rotterdam and staying with a Dutch family and being surprised to see them watching tele in English, They said nearly everyone in their area had a big aerial point out west so they could see British tele as well as their own local stuff.

Doing away with geo blocking will lose some business a shed load of money. The question is whether their interests and their profits should be allowed to trump the law. Businesses are quick enough to extol the virtues of globalisation when it makes them cash, they don't tend to like the flip side though. But there are businesses that will lose out. Using sport as an example, I seem to remember there was a case involving the English Premier League and Greece, so using that. Its seems there are massive numbers of people in the UK who are prepared to spend a fortune for the coverage of this football, allowing Sky to pay the league a staggering amount of money. It would seem a reasonable bet that people in Greece won't be as desperate to see English clubs playing, so they get the coverage at a lower price since they are unlikely to fork over the same amount as English fans. But they do pay something, so this increases the total take for Sky and therefore the league. It's basic economics, but it would also seem to be totally illegal.

So it profit more important or the principal of free trade where it benefits consumers rather than just businesses. Of course consumers get to vote, but politicians seem to have given up thinking that voters are important, whereas companies exert influence in other ways, which politicians seem to find more important these days.

Scorchio! This June was the sixty-sixth hottest on record

Dazed and Confused
Happy

Oh look peoples irony filter seems to be on the blink again.

Dazed and Confused
Happy

But not many people will be taking NOAA global surface temperature "records" very seriously any more, since they were recently massively amended to make the long-ago past "records" colder and the recent past and present "records" hotter.

But surely you have to make the data fit the theory.

Isn't that how these things are supposed to work?

How else do you get an increase in your research grant.

Universal Pictures finds pirated Jurassic World on own localhost, fires off a DMCA takedown

Dazed and Confused

Re: 127.0.0.1

Now we just need to know the IP address of the scanning company and we can all download the film for free, now that we know where a legitimate copy is.

You can secretly snoop on someone if they butt-dial you – US judges

Dazed and Confused
Happy

Re: WTF!!!

> In reality, I don't think he knowingly operated the device !!!

Maybe he was speaking out of his arse and voice dialed her.