Posts by Sir Alien 134 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2010
I know I am always pissing on peoples fun but here is a snippet I found regarding the CAA (in the UK) so no hedge hopping for you sadly. Don't take my word for it though as I could be wrong (or the source is, not surprised if they are).
"""An unmanned aircraft must always be flown at least 50m distance away from a person, vehicle, building or structure."""
I do enjoy a little drone action myself but more for the experimental and tinkering at an engineering level.
If mass call scraping or surveillance is against ECHR rules then quite a number of EU countries need to be kicked as they are already are or planning to do it as well.
No need to mention the countries by name as people can with reasonable accuracy, guess the countries implied here. If they don't get kicked, it's just another situation of Pot meet Kettle.
In my opinion laws like this are for pretty much two reasons and none of them are related to terrorism. Just think of this, would you have protests if you can stop the planning of protests from the start? Person (A) starts to think about gathering protesters, then person (A) suddenly is arrested.
Another good thing (sarcasm) with banning encryption is that it makes the NSA's (and other spy agencies) jobs easier regarding industrial espionage. That nice French invention suddenly patented in America would go down nicely or vice versa. It would be industrial espionage at a grand scale.
This ECHR ruling effects those in Russia how?
The EU can jump up and down and rant as much as they want. If this was a law in Russia on Russian soil then the EU can do absolutely nothing.
If Russia was enforcing installing such monitoring equipment within the EU with EU based communications providers then there may be grounds for enforcement but otherwise this man is out of luck.
NB: I am not pro or anti Russian. I am simply a watcher sent here to monitor you.
http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
Understandably some things no longer apply as they have been fixed or removed but much of the blog is still valid today. One of the reasons PHP is so popular is you can simply copy and paste tons of code from the web. This also explains why many PHP sites are vulnerable as those users that just use the example verbatim from the web don't realize that they are examples and not meant to be production based code.
Although ChromeOS only has 1% that is quite a fast growth considering how long the other operating systems have been about. ChromeOS only got released around end 2009 / start 2010 and the first available hardware was only around 2011. So ChromeOS has grabbed 1% market share in just 4 years.
I am not advocating the ChromeOS is in anyway the best of the best and it has its own problems but overall I kind of like it. The only thing missing for me is desktop streaming for things like games and/or software on windows computers that is not available as a native chrome app.
Something like Steam in-home streaming (not just for games you know) would benefit the ChromeOS family quite a bit if there was a Steam client for the ChromeBook (without needing to install Linux in a rooted container)
- S.A
What people fail to realize is yes you can add all the usual parts to it (wifi, keyboard, etc) but what if you simply want a really tiny A+ hooked to a quad-copter? You know, a tiny Pi for the makers.
This is a good start since you don't have all the extra components of the B+ but rather a bare-bones A+ that you can add components to to make your own version for what you are making.
As for Wifi, it has options. USB hub to Wifi or use an SDIO wifi module on the GPIO.
- S.A
Actually anonymous on here does not work because your login is via plain text (meaning a visible session) and thus every post afterwards as anonymous will have that same session in plain text.
Currently anonymous is pointless on El Reg because you are only anonymous in that you name looks different once posted that's it.
My VPN to abroad is working brilliantly and has rotated/discarded keys. So all my ISP will see is one very long connection to somewhere of cryto-crap.
- S.A
Tried Windows 10, won't be keeping it. So far each attempt to make something past Windows 7 has ended in disaster for Microsoft. Fair enough each successive Windows performance has slightly improved but this for me is not enough to justify moving from Windows 7.
Windows 7 is supported till 2020 so I will continue to use it till then. If the software (and some games) that I use eventually work on other platforms like Mac or Linux then I see no reason to keep the Windows machine.
All I need to do now is filter extensively through Windows update to make sure they don't keep trying to sneak in the Windows 10 auto-upgrader. Once it is on it's a bitch to remove.
- S.A
The day that happens to us is the day we use solar because at €1500 solar panels will quickly pay for themselves in no time. Energy companies unless they can ban self powering houses need to play it safe in that if they become to expensive, people will search for alternatives.
Granted the UK is not the best place for solar power efficiency considering the weather nearer the autumn and winter months but even so they can produce quite a bit of usable power if you can store it.
Right now, with us correcting our energy company each month, we find it sort of works out cost effective(ish) to just continue paying for the power and using it carefully.
For Spain, just use solar since you always have good sun even in winter (except for the nut-job that thinks she owns the sun)
- S.A
This is one of the reasons I never do direct debit with any energy company. They are fast to claim the money and slow to return. We pay it manually each time and just accept the small penalty (or punishment) for not doing DD. On more than one occasion we found they would have over charged us by well over £75 over the amount due and we corrected them each time.
Never trust any unpredictable amount on direct debit.
Don't forget that most diamonds have serial numbers micro-laser etched into them. Although you cannot see it with the naked eye, if you place it under a microscope you will see the serial number.
So normal diamonds that Joe Public and purchase are traceable. Uncut diamonds as far as I know are illegal in most countries.
- S.A
Was one (or more) developers of Truecrypt USA citizens? If so it is likely that they received a secret court order, ordering them to weaken parts of the code or leave subtle vulnerabilities. You would never know as the order would be secret and so in defiance the developers just packed up shop like a well known encrypted mail provider.
If the intentional bug was found for those even bothering to look they could just claim unknown bug and then fix it (and leave another bug elsewhere)
Or simply, they got fed up of coding it.
- S.A
The government should be run by engineers. Pushing the boundaries and pushing for progress.
And in most instances, engineers actually have a clue what they are talking about. Current politicians and current politics is all about control, power and ass kissing.
- S.A
I am no law expert so please correct me where I slip up but can the journalists now sue the crap out of the phone provider (and the police)? RIPA although it compels, is not a secret request so even though they skipped asking a judge can the provider not challenge this in court thus making a judge aware and having the judge slap the RIPA abusers?
- S.A
What if this is all a ruse and in actual fact this is not a hack by some script kiddies and rather an instance of "oops we lost your data on a train for spy agency to conveniently find". Talk Talk get told to remain as is by agency, data is lost, blame game ensues, make it look like a legit hacker.
I am off to get my tinfoil hat. My large brain requires the entire roll.
- S.A
Who you voted for is irrelevant today. Any other party in power would be doing the very same thing, even if you voted in Tories, Labour, UKIP, <insert party of choice>. It's almost as if the parties by name is simply a cover to simulate democracy.
- S.A
I am no conspiracy nut job but I do like to occasionally see if their story matches the event sometimes. The bit I found weird is that the light in the sky is white/blue like a hydrogen or similar gas burn yet most ICBM type missiles like trident tend to use solid rocket fuel which burns more yellow/white.
If this were simply a trident test launch that light in the sky should look a little different. Also since ICBMs are guided as far as I know, they would not need to redirect air traffic as they can control altitude and direction. Now I could be wrong and that particular missile uses a different type of fuel but to my knowledge most ICBMs are solid fuel multi-stage.
Although it may be nothing serious they could have at least made a better cover story that sounds more authentic.
- S.A
Is that people who want to keep some data private (or criminals too) will simply use VPNs to countries with more strict privacy rules (or countries that don't give a crap what the UK government says)
Outlaw VPN I hear you say? Well prove it is in use as you can simply do SSL VPN over port 443 which is normally used for encrypted web traffic. Oh wait, lets ban encryption all together so now you must let us see what you do in plain text.
You can no longer speak in code words either, obviously only terrorists do that.
Please stop this planet so I can get off.
- S.A
Actually there is quite a bit of accountability. Technically Halifax or other financial systems could take legal action against Comodo. It is also a reason for the certificate insurance.
I was informed that the insurance is not for site breaches but that the CA has done the needed checks and insured that the certificate being made out is for the organisation it is meant for.
It is just a case of even if the banks can hold them accountable, would they. All well and good being able to sue someone but would they actually do it or just pass the blame.
- SA
In some ways I agree and disagree with Elon. Fossil fuels, although seem nice and easy from a user perspective, are very pollutant and create smog. I am not a massive OMFGWTF melting the world concern type of person but more a case of still wanting to breath air rather than a bowl of soot particles constantly.
Personally I think electric powered vehicles are the future and we should be investing more heavily into it so that the transition is smoother. But that is where my agreement with him stops. I think battery powered vehicles are not the future, especially with Lithium based power sources as that have very limited range and we have limited amounts of lithium on this planet.
For electric powered vehicles to take off we need to have the convenience of petrol powered cars with the clean running of electric. In my book that means, hydrogen fuel cell or if batteries must be used. a MASSIVE/GIGANTIC leap in battery technology that is also not made of an extremely limited resource and charges as fast as fueling a car.
- SA
I assume simply naming the accuser does not allow the accuser to take any legal action against him. Even if they did, it would not be libel since he has evidence of the insecurities and he would win. A side effect of this is that the public may (depending on the case) be able to see the evidence of the court case or they can decide not to take it to court and keep the exploits unknown.
By just naming the company, their clients would already start taking precautions about the hardware or checking it themselves.
- SA
If the road you were travelling on changed speed limit such as going from national limit to 50 or to 40 then the sign MUST be visible or it is assumed without correct road signs that the speed limit did not change. If such a case where you were caught speeding came about, without you being able to tell that the speed limit has changed it is with almost great certainty that a court will find in your favour and throw out the case.
If on the other hand there was a sign fully visible and you were still breaking the speed limit, well that's on you. :-D
I personally ride with a journey camera now, so that if something like this ever came up, I could see on video if a sign was obscured and use this as evidence.
-SA
According to some review sites, the Pixel (2) does run a lot cooler and does not try to kill itself in a massive ball of flame. I sure hope the LS model will be available in the UK since I would like to have one. Like many the reason I did not get the original, although I would have liked to, is the not so great spec and gigantic price.
With the new model you can run both ChromeOS and Ubuntu Linux and it would have plenty of resources left to do other things. It is about time the PC market (or ChromeOS market, same thing when you Linux it) gets a decent spec'd decent design and solidly build laptop of a size that is portable and not the size of a house.
I will continue slobber over my F5 key to see when the LS model is available :-D
- SA
A)
An idiot given any language regardless of how good it supposedly is, can write terrible and vulnerable code.
B)
There is no bad languages, just bad programmers/designers
C)
In your replies case, the breakages are "normally" because the developer has not implemented the feature in a standard way and not followed any deprecation warnings. Like trying to use a Windows 3.1 application on Windows 7 and then complaining that the upgrade broke the application. The application creator should have updated it or simply said, does not support XYZ operating system. This does happen for Java, where I have encountered applications that only work with Java 6 and say that is all they support.
Ah, I see your problem. An unofficial pub statistic is it seems that all accidents seem the have this uncanny attraction to the colour read. We had a red Rover and everyone seemed to treat it like a target (probably being a Rover too)
Had a blue car for many years since and not a single incident.
- SA
Unlimited write cycles don't sell more drives.
They need to design failure into the product to ensure you buy more.
Even if the failure is only 5 years later. That and technology moves on so the only long term unlimited(ness) you will get is from mostly embedded stuff that sits around for 25+ years.
The average "Joe" will likely get a new drives simply for speed, size or just a new drive with a new (tablet, phone, pc, whatever)
Not many distros use it yet because of the massive debacle. I know red hat use it but that's because they made it. There are loads of distros on the fence because of systemd.
But because gnome would require systemd in future if you wanted to not use systemd you would also have to drop gnome.
To be honest not so much of a great loss since gnome 3+ has become utter rubbish.
- SA
SSL/TLS was more meant as a general term even though many implementations are known to be useless. I should have replaced it simply with keypair encryption of some sorts. Regardless with very little effort, anyone can do completely encrypted communications directly to each other which simply overrides whatever MI6 have said. It is not the fault of big providers but the lack of action on the governments part.
- SA
Okay so the TERRist has a hotmail account and the government can now see everything. BUT the suspected terrorists post nothing of the kind to each other using their hotmail. Instead they use a peer to peer instant messaging client that uses public/private keys to encrypt their direct communication with each other.
<sarcasm>
So obviously now that they can chat in secret it must obviously be large corporations fault.
</sarcasm>
1. ISP can't see a thing other then source/destination. Can somewhat but not completely be hidden by TOR
2. There is no large corporation to blame as they are not using server-side services. Nothing to trawl through.
3. Unless they have broken TLS/SSL keypairs some how then they cannot view the contents of the data unless they get hold of each of the private keys from the individuals.
4. It does not require very much knowledge to use encrypted chat clients. Just a few internet searches to see what programs + features are available and that is it.
I am all for nailing these terrorist rats to a wall but simply passing the blame just goes to show how little they care and simply want a nation of blanket monitoring. The government needs to take responsibility for their own inaction.
- SA
Although I think the watch is a gimmick I kind of like it for one reason. Unlike the failed Samsung attempts it does not look like someone has just strapped a small phone to your wrist. In the streaming video it actually looks thin and um.... watch-like.
So purely in terms of hardware Apple are ahead of the game. Won't know much about software until it is in active use by the populous for a while.
- SA
I will wait until the true Electric car is upon us. The hydrogen fuel cell powered one.
My neighbour actually got rid of his new Prius in favour of a Diesel powered car because he said in winter and cold weather the batteries are so rubbish that he gets worse fuel economy than most pure petrol cars. Yes diesel is more polluting than any other fuel type out there but seeing as they get good fuel economy and range its no surprise that diesels are still selling so well.
We definitely need more research into Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars. They produce zero pollution (water) and fill up in a matter of seconds/minutes just like todays fuel cars. I don't want to sit at a pub for 8 hours waiting to charge up.
And for all those that are going to say where do we get the hydrogen from? Well the most logical thing to keep it zero carbon footprint would be to use solar/wind/wave energy. There are many North African and South European countries that get huge amounts of good powerful sunlight so a good solar farm can produce masses of hydrogen and just export it.
-SA
Ok, granted not all closed-source software companies are dicks but in general many are. With Open Source you point the flaw and everyone is up in arms scream how crap open source is and then of course nose onto screen to start patching.
With some closed source companies, of which I can think of one example starting with the letter V and ending with the letter W that will simple take a gagging order out on you to stop you saying a thing. No one knows if the problems have been fixed except that the ones making the report are now silenced.
<sarcasm_on>
So if there is a bug in your code. Get a gag order. Job done, bug destroyed
<sarcasm_off>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/28/birmingham_uni_car_cracker_muzzled_by_lords/
Doubt Apache is losing it due to IIS. Not saying IIS isn't gaining traction however your statement is stupid. Web server market share for Apache is more likely being lost to NGINX.
Now maybe someone should audit NGINX code :-)
http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/web_server/all (take with a pinch of salt)
Who knows... maybe they simply truncate your password so when it gets spat out the other end it is only 10 characters. And then someone accidentally took that feature out and BAM, error.
ICO probably like most say, will do nothing about it yet strange thing is the little guy in the same position would be in prison, fined a million pounds and lashed in public (ok the last one is a bit of drama added)
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