* Posts by anonimous

6 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Sep 2009

NASTY SSL 3.0 vuln to be revealed soon – sources (Update: It's POODLE)

anonimous

Re: Thank $deity for proprietary software

Err, no. In proprietary software often you don't even know about security flaws. But the hackers will.

Women in IT: ‘If you want to be taken seriously, dress like a man’

anonimous

Re: Its not just you..

Sure. But those ridicules of others' failures will be disregarded just as your accomplishments were.

This week I had the same reality check. After a very long stretch (2 years) of work overload, which I accepted "for the good of the team", I see that others who did a fraction of the work but had the time to too their horns are viewed as "more valuable team members".

Morale: allocate less time for actual work and more time for blowing own horn. It's not the real work that gets rewarded. It's the "visibility".

Amazon yoinks Dora and SpongeBob from Netflix for MEELLLIONS

anonimous

Cool! That means for time outdoor with my kids!

Really, the best way to teach a lesson to the idiots from the media industry is to stop consuming their stuff. Despite what they want you to believe, you can actually have fun away from the TV screen.

Skype adds video calls to iPhone app

anonimous

Wow! (not)

I've been using Skype video calls on my Nokia N900 for quite a while now. OTOH, even if I don't like to admit it, the camera quality on iPhone 4 is way better, wish I had that on the N900.

Apple IDs the next-generation iPhone

anonimous
Black Helicopters

Too many risks

Don't know about others, but NFC and other similar technologies (including the UK's Oyster Card and the Netherland's OV Chipkaart) make me very uncomfortable. Sure, they have many advantages, but personally I see a lot of issues as well:

- Ability to track one's movements quite easily. Now it's just public transport, but RFID readers will become more and more ubiquitous. Yes, I know I can already be tracked by mobile phone, by credit card purchases and other things. All the more reasons not to get an extra tracking system on me - I'm running out of tinfoil.

- Open to fraud. I'm not talking about fraudulent recharges of transport cards - it's the transport companies' problem, I couldn't care less. What I'm worried about are concealed devices which can trick my card or my phone into making payments without my knowledge. You know, like someone with a reader hidden in a plain bag, collecting payments from anyone in the vicinity. And before someone jumps to say that it's not possible, remember that the Oyster and OV cards were marketed as being safe too.

- Difficult to reverse wrong charges. What if the reader in the bus or in the shop accidentally charges me twice or charges the wrong amount? With cash I can just get my money back, but how do you do it with an NFC device?

Because of these and of the dozens of other exploits that are bound to be invented, I prefer to make my money transactions in a more physical or at least visible form - cash, credit card etc. They're not perfect either, but at least I have a little more control over them.

Man remanded for extreme porn offences

anonimous

@@Trafficking, fiction

It's of course your right to believe or not my story. All that I said is true. I am from Eastern Europe and I was poor. And having grown up under a communist regime, I understand better than you do the dangers of an over-powering government with a strong addiction to surveillance.

I didn't say that women are trafficked for being shown in porn movies - although that happends sometimes too. They are trafficked for much worse things. Just because you don't know any illegal brothels, it doesn't mean they don't exist.

Currently I live in Netherlands, where prostitution has a very clear legal framework. An indeed I think this is a better system and it does cut down a lot on trafficking - but still, it doesn't stop it completely. There were victims retrieved from Netherlands too. A "slave owner" makes more money and doesn't have to bother about any legal restrictions - or even taxes for that matter.

I don't have anything against legal prostitution, as I don't have anything against porn, no matter how extreme. As long as everything is done consensual, government has no business telling people what to do, watch or think.

Basically there are two main points I wanted to make:

1. Hunting porn watchers under the pretext of fighting traffic is stupid and in fact counter-productive, as we've seen here quite clearly. It actually makes people to dismiss the problem of trafficking altogether.

2. Trafficking is a serious problem and it doesn't disappear simply by pretending that it doesn't exist.