Sidegrade

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are both based on NT Kernel 6.1. They share the same codebase.

Re: Overly simplistic

The trouble with the last paragraph is that, for private companies, EVERY person is worth pursuing because EACH one is a potential sale. That's why spam persists even today, since the return for just snagging one or two people is more than the cost of all that spamming. Google is well-known for its harvesting (and now with Android it's pretty hard to avoid them--block the web, they'll get you with the phone). Facebook's even more notorious as those infamous "Like" buttons can track you down even if you never visit Facebook, even if you never click that button. And more firms are working to get around adblockers by insisting on local hosting (to get around address blocking--blocking the host site is usually a ticket to an unreadable page) or hiding things behind script-block detectors. And with plenty of personal information open to the public (either by government mandate or as a result of using a publicly-available service like the telephone), just ONE detail can put two and two together very darn quickly.

That's part of the problem.

It's reached a point where the music companies and the public can't agree on the balance. Indeed, some people on both sides don't WANT balance (the corporates are answering to their shareholders and the freetards are engaged in civil disobedience, so say each side) and have enough sway to keep the boat rocking. Plus it's the corporations that hold the government's ear right now (IOW, government doesn't have enough fear of the people) in an atmosphere of considerable corporate distrust.

Re: This is just another sign that the people in power

You gotta find them first, and then you may learn to your dismay that a number of them are based in countries with hostile relations to the West or simply don't want to allow extradition. That's one of the beauties of the Net. It doesn't respect borders while governments HAVE TO.

How about outer space?

Insignificant gravity and no atmosphere. What would happen if you did the trick with no substrate in space?

It's a matter of jurisdictions.

Basically, phone theft like this is considered petty theft and therfore a local matter. So usually only the local police gets involved in the case, but as another poster noted, minor crimes like petty theft go low on the police priority list. Plus the US is a pretty big country with 50 states with numerous police jurisdictions inside each one and a hodgepodge of organizational structures that make coordination difficult.

Re: This is not the age of entitlement

And if the bis people knew anything about supply and demand they will know that, even then, people voted with their feet, then their wallets, and now with their fingers. At least a good undercurrent of the freetard movement is that the biz people are demanding too much and aren't willing to negotiate down when they find no buyers (the normal trend is to mark down and see about correcting the sore points--please tell me where I can find honest-to-goodness GOOD music anymore). There's also the matter of resale: something people have been used to since the BOOK (how many attempts to block the resale of books have succeeded--then there's the matter of libraries). Top that off with fading limits on copyrights (a privilege which according to fundamental laws is supposed to be limited--like patents--so as to advance the arts in exchange for enriching society) and an economy stuck in the doldrums and you have businesses stuck in the middle of a PR nightmare as their customers (pay attention: business require customers to operate, last I checked) feel they're getting the shaft. And for some people, a little luxury (such as a good night out or a nice tune to hear) is important to maintain a positive mental attitude that translates into social relations and other societal influences.

Re: There will always be a place for B&Ms.

Thing is, Walmart's ALSO slimming down its lineup. Basic stuff like keyboards are there, but you won't find internal hard drives anymore (you USED to, though). If you need to fix a PC in a hurry, then Walmart, Target, etc. won't be your go-to place. And it's getting harder to find a local PC shop with reasonable prices. And some of the competition (Circuit City) has already vanished while others have limited reach. In some cases like mine, odds are it's Best Buy or Bust.

Re: Overly simplistic

It's pretty much dead, and there's no one anyone can do to stop it.

Encryption? Install a zero-day malware on the machine and intercept the data before it's encrypted or after it's decrypted (after all, it's useless unless you're able to use it at some point--just intercept it THEN). Virtual machine? Detect it and use a hypervisor exploit to break out. Alternative OS? They already know about those. Airgap? Data has to be transported somehow; jump the airgap that way.

And then there's that business about government interests in exascale computing and long-term archival storage in capacities they've yet to name. IOW, if they don't get you now, they'll just hold it and let Moore's Law catch up so they can get you later.

And if not the governments, then who knows who else wants to pry in...? The big problem about being able to access anyone is being ACCESSIBLE to anyone.

Re: SOPA will be approved in some form

Thing is, securing one's political footing is the first order of business of just about any politician. Does it come as any surprise that a large number of political elections actually aren't elections at all...because there is no viable opponent to the incumbent? And if there is, odds are pretty good he's just as bad.

In other words, elections are becoming more of a choice between two evils. So tell me, would you rather be dragged through cacti or locked in with rabid racoons?

How?

I would think fingerprinting would be hit or miss, given the widely varying range of picture qualities you see. And if you set the net too wide, you could end up with false positives or misidentifications.

Re: 10.1 update

Not to mention the 7.0Plus, which is supposed to have better specs than the new (7.0) (it has a 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos on board) and is on Samsung's "will upgrade" list.

Re: Remember where most of them came from.

Precisely the point. They were religious arch-conservatives: tightwads, sticklers for the scripture. To them, nudity was a sign of Original Sin, if not the Deadly Sin of Lust. Tell me, do you anything resembling the Amish or the Mennonites east of the pond? Where else but the colonies could you have a story like Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter?

Re: has no one tried

I think size is the problem here. Most Rogallo wings are SEMI-rigid (those that aren't use inflatable skeletons) while parawings are completely NON-rigid and therefore compact much more easily. Then there is the matter of the size of the wing relative to the payload.

They don't use perv-scanners...

...because prisons know the ingenuity of prison smugglers, and some of the most common stashing places happen to be in the orifices (both up top and "where the sun don't shine"), neither of which can be probed by most modern scanner technologies. The only one known to work is transmissive x-rays, like they use in hospitals. At least one jail in Illinois DOES use this tech, and it has been able to detect swallowed and "inserted" contraband. Trouble is, the machines shoot much more radiation than the perv-scanner, and frequent travelers could hit their annual radiation quote way too quickly.

Re: We don't want driving planes,

Unfortunately, physics kinda gets in the way. The only reliable ways we've found to take off and land in place involve very delicate designs (with strict weight limits) and the use of (a) rotors which are considerably wider than the vehicle itself or (b) very hot, powerful, and inefficient ducted jet thrust, both of which have such complicated controls and are so sensitive to ambient conditions that it's unlikely any computer can be made that can accommodate for all the variables (even modern commercial airliners have trouble when facing unexpected atmospheric phenomena).

Re: "...which has trawled through some old shipyard records..."

As I recall, the Olympic was also the FIRST of the three, so it probably had more attention paid to it than did the Titanic. Incidentally, they pulled some pieces that were supposed to go to Titanic to repair Olympic after her first collision. Perhaps that put more pressure on Titanic's construction as well. Just saying that just because they were sister ships doesn't mean they were built to the same standards and/or under the same circumstances and scrutiny.

Remember where most of them came from.

For the most part, the early American colonies were started by Puritans...dissenters, essentially. Religion was the main reason they CAME to America in the first place, so it (along with the environment) is going to have a profound influence in cultural development. As for the tolerance of violence, that tends to come from having to push out into wilderness for 100 years or so.

Still possible.

What about implanted bombs or other explosives hidden INSIDE someone (think an explosive-filled dildo)? They can be armed well before the flight and go off during the flight with no further intervention.

Re: We don't want driving planes,

To-MAE-to, to-MAH-to, what's the difference. They're the same thing. The plane wins out in the shape war because airplanes are more sensitive to shape.

Re: Yes

So couple a high-powered directional transmitter with a highly-sensitive directional receiver. The transmitter pumps enough power to reach the chip and power it while the receiver picks up the faint transmission.

Re: Obvious

Someone tried that on me. They didn't know, however, I tended to kill time with Mindtrap puzzles (which feature lots of lateral thinking). I figured out the password in three tries.

Re: So, like this?

Insert the first three letters of the pertinent book ("Gen", in this case) and you'll have a solution workable with even a verse of a single word. So in your case, the password can become "GenHrV2C2". That's nine letters and above the eight-character minimum.

Unlike the Cell, BluRay WON its format war. And they are still improving on the format with quad-layer discs and so on. Allegedly, some of these improvements can actually be used in existing drives with just a firmware update (that remains to be seen--firmware can't overcome hardware limitations, after all).

Re: Crap for collectors

Probably the idea is that, by then, they'll go all-electronic. If you want the title, you download it. And from the looks of it, this device will REQUIRE an Intenet connection, so there will be no excuses.

Re: Card number

Even so, the term "nickel-and-diming" springs to mind. Simply make a bunch of little transasctions which then add up.

Re: There is no first Amendment right to use obscene language

Not so much "obscene" as "patently offensive". It's a grey area because it's a matter of conflicting rights. What one person may consider passe (consider a six-letter word beginning with the letter N), another would consider mortally offensive because it has a bad history for the person. There's also the matter of the "FIRE! in a crowded theater" scenario: speech intentionally meant to spark rage or panic. Then there's the matter of context. If the speech was generalized and more in the nature of "The USA SUCKS &%(&^!", it would probably be let go as a protest (and protected), but if it went more like "%(&^)( BOMB THE %*(&%)# CAPITOL!" then you're inciting riot, and you're in trouble.

Re: No BC?

I have a suspicion that the AMD question will not be the complete story. From the earliest days of the PlayStation, Sony's always made sure to put in a few chips of its own design to make things interesting, from the XA chip in the PS1 to the Emotion Engine/Graphics Synthesizer in the PS2, to the Cell co-designed with IBM and Toshiba in the PS3. I imagine there will be at least one Sony-designed custom chip in there. Probably a coprocessor of some kind or a proprietary encryption ASIC, neither of which would be easy to emulate in hack jobs, particularly if those chips perform timing-sensitive operations.

Re: This sounds rubbish

And you have to wonder where this would work in the United States, where the Right of First Sale is enshrined in law (and many would argue that a license can itself be considered a salable good). Maybe Vernor v. Autodesk fell out due to a technicality, but if Sony tried this stateside, SOMEONE's gonna sue...and then a LOT of companies (including Valve) would be paying attention to the court. It'd become the second-biggest case of late.

Re: Pathetic

Well, Steam has its benefits. You don't have to worry about program updates, for one thing. And it has a vibrant community and a huge library.

As for price, only one or two games in a collection of some 200+ games were bought full price. Kinda hard to do anymore anywhere else. So it's become rather take-it-or-leave-it. So I say take it...but not at full price.

Re: A Damning Statement About the Windows Ecosystem

Separate accounts won't work because at setup time you can usually only setup "for me" or "for everyone". Even in the UNIX world, it's a bit nontrivial to set everything up properly "for someone else" since each program does things differently.

As for UAC, you're looking at it the wrong way. The idea is to separate the ones you expect from the ones you don't. If you weren't expecting the UAC prompt, then you need to reconsider. Because even the most secure setup in the world won't stop a user running a malware disguised as an installer (one of the few times privilege escalation is necessary, desired, and expected). Even Ubuntu packages and Android apps can be tainted (and no, you can't train everyone). Only iOS seems to stay clean, and THAT'S only because they take the "Big Brother" approach (think the irony: the "1984" Mac commercial way back when).

Re: To far

If he was tweeting from home, why would the school computer get involved? You'd be going through the parent's consumer ISP, so the school doesn't get involved unless they're performing some ISP-like role like a content-filtering proxy.

We've had all this argument, but a few key unknowns remain. First, if the student really did tweet from home, then he did it after school. What was the TIMESTAMP on the original tweet? Second, if the student really did tweet from home, then the tweet's origin address should indicate that rather than a school machine. What was the source IP of the tweet?

Re: "I had this idea that life would adapt to the deep"

There may well be, but the conditions 11km down make the possible conditions extremely limited. There's too much water for light to get through, it's pretty isolated (we're talking a trench--a deep sea chasm), so there's probably little to no ocean currents, and last it's been checked there are no geothermal outputs down there. All this adds up to a limiting factor--a lack of either energy with which to sustain life or nutrients that can be converted into energy though biological processes.

Re: To far

To be fair, it IS in most school codes that profanity is not allowed (just as lewd clothing is not allowed--you're there to LEARN, not to pick up girls/guys). If the tweet had been done on school equipment (and thus public property), then it is likely well within the school's rights to discipline the student for breaking the conduct codes.

That said, outright expulsion seems VERY extreme for profanity. Detention, a weekend detention, or perhaps a day of in-school suspension would've likely sufficed to let the student know that spouting obscenities on school property is not proper behaviour.

Re: Can't be done with QR or hard?

"For the WiFi application "reading over the shoulder" is irrelevant. It's just a simple way to input the password, freely available, but only such inside the restaurant or whatever."

But they DON'T WANT the password to be freely available. What they want is that only paying customers can use the system, not the ones hanging outside or the ones just sitting in the waiting room. To do that, you need dynamically-generated passwords that keep changing, but passing along the dynamic password without it getting passed to undesirables is tricky. With NFC, you can secure the system. NFC is BIdirectional, unlike barcodes, so you can ensure a given password is issued only once, because there is confirmation that the code was received. That also means you know when to cancel that password (when contact under that password stops for some time: long enough to be reasonably sure the person has left) By setting the contact point at the bar or dining table, you practically ensure physical presence at the desired locations (SOMEONE has to actually place the phone at the contact point). And an embedded device (one hidden from sight) isn't as prone to the usual abuses of being in plain sight (getting knocked around and potentially broken the way a screen would).

Re: Because obviously...

No, because it would be expensive to put a screen on every table, plus they're hard to embed (not like an NFC point which doesn't have to be visible. Visible stuff is more likely to break. Plus it's more difficult to do the one-time-account business with screens. And paper? Ahem, litter problem and paper costs? Thermal paper isn't exactly cheap.

And no, because I'm not worried about the plod outside but rather the one already inside who's sneaking directly behind me.

Re: Quite innocuous, everyday items can be used.

Like, say, YOUR ARMS? Nothing like the ol' sleeper hold to put someone at your mercy. Then there are YOUR LEGS. There is a reason for some people that THEIR BODY is considered a lethal weapon. Supposing these people will never be allowed to fly since they can kill people and maybe even break down the cockpit door without any assistance or augmentation at all...

Re: Impossible with QR...?

Even better, with a setup like this, the usernames and passwords can be generated on the fly, useable only for that customer for that session and discarded once it leaves contact for, say, two or three hours (a pretty sure sign he's gone for the day/night). This way, the only people who can use your system are the customers currently inside, and it blocks the "come in one, then just hang outside in future" approach, since each customer's session is only good exactly once.

Re: Impossible with QR...?

Barcodes on screens can be over-the-shouldered. Plus NFC stations can detect and lmiit itself to just one device: the phones that comes within a couple cm of it (which is 9 times out of 10 the desired target). Furthermore, I think it would be easier to set up a mesh of NFC contact points instead of a bunch of video screens or a bunch of QR-coded slips or cards that end up in the trash or strewn on the floor.

Re: How?

Well, originally there WAS a minimum standard: sustained transfer rates of over 100Mbit/sec to a mobile device (and 1Gbit/sec to a stationary one). LTE Advanced is the closest thing there is to it, but it's still a few years out and also starved for spectrum (there's only so much data you can send wirelessly, no matter which technique you use--it's physics that's limiting you). The good news is that you can convert LTE towers to LTE Advanced towers with only relatively-minor refitting (this is one reason for the LTE push now--looking ahead). The bad news is that the phones also need to be redone, which makes carriers reluctant to move too quickly. But people are already butting up against the limits of HSPA and are creating a demand for something better. LTE isn't much better than HSPA, but with pent-up demand and no alternatives, the ITU (THIS is the body that originally set the generational definitions) realized they set the 4G bar too high (no one would be able to make the goal anytime soon) so moved the goal posts. What was once 4G will likely become 5G, once LTE becomes more entrenched and the transition from there to LTE Advanced can then begin.

Not much, I would think.

Even down in the Challenger Deep, fiber optic cable is solid (low compressibility) and pretty thin (low surface area). I don't think solid cable would have too much difficulty in hyperbaric situations.

Re: Oh, good grief...

Okay, so it's been slow going, but as has been pointed out, DNS-poisoning exploits showing up in the wild lent some urgency to the matter. Nothing like a fire at your feet to make you dance, is there?

Re: Diplomatic Immunity

Attacking, maybe. Pointing out that such a device might be construed as ESPIONAGE (which IS grounds under most treaties for the revocation of diplomatic immunities), that's another story.