@AC

Don't get me started. That was /not/ my idea, and it has taken me four solid years of fighting tooth and nail to be allowed the opportunity to replace it. There are things which make me rage. There are things which make me cry. Then there are things which make me experience desires to commit war crimes. Actually, only one thing has ever fallen into the latter category, and that is ISA.

@zef

Name one?

I am not defending the iPhone here, but the state of consumer (or hell, even enterprise) electronics is truly appalling from a quality standpoint.

@PC Tech

http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Trevor%20Pott

It was brought up in a recent article of mine. You should read the past four, as they are all about the various layers of protection against web-based threats

@JaitcH

So...who do you buy from?

Propaganda

We have always been at war with EastAsia

extraexploit

There is no One True Solution. It is all of it merely another part of proper Defence In Depth.

@Thad

There are better options than hosts files for those who aren't running thier own DNS servers. Next article...

@AC

The Trevor Pott definition of a smartphone, which holds no weight whatsoever, is that a smartphone is a device you can both install applications upon and make phone calls from. (I leave open the question of whether or not PCs/Laptops equipped with Skype count.) Many “dumb phones” still have advanced features: cameras, browsers, etc. These phones can’t be changed beyond the manufacturer’s software loadout however, making them even more locked down than a non-jailbroken iPhone.

To contrast, a smartphone is essentially a palm pilot with a cellular radio and an application for making phone calls. There are nigglies about “but they’re more advanced than that” I am sure, but the basic principle remains the same. Smartphones are PDAs/application executing devices first and phones second. Dumb phones are phones first and they maybe do other things when needed.

I suspect that 10 minutes with any device will give you a good understanding of which side of that gap the device in question was designed for.

@jake

Seems to me you don't need a fully auto weapon to remind your government that the people hold the power. At least two of my guns pretty much exist only for that purpose (useless for hunting) but again: semi-auto. One shot at one target, shoot to wound first, kill if only absolutely necessary. By the gods I hope I never have cause to use them for their intended purpose (removing an illegal government.)

The only legitimate reasons (other than people who collect guns simply because they admire the craftsmanship) that I can see for owning a gun are a) hunting b) removal of illegal government/the revolution/zombie apocalypse. One is a sport, the other is an event that we all should be hoping never, ever occurs.

A full auto weapon is pretty much the antithesis of a hunting weapon. Too much bullet in your meat, and fills the hide full of holes. Deposing an illegal government/the revolution would seem like an activity that one would want to engage in with the minimal possible causalities, as you would be fighting your own countrymen in that war.

As for the zombie apocalypse, well...I would prefer a single shot with a GREAT scope. Take them out from a distance and keep moving. I wouldn’t want to be wasting ammo, because I never know how many zombies are between me and the next place where there are appropriately sized bullets.

"Within reason?"

Since when has the Canadian government needed a reason? The conservatives are in power, which means that when the US says jump, Canada says "on what vector?"

Disgusting, really...

It's not just a matter of making available the raw data files.

It is also a matter of making available the APIs required to properly use them. Here's a thought: who owns the intellectual property to that? Were the programs in use created by a proprietary company? Perhaps a good chunk of the money involved is actually going to purchasing the intellectual property rights to the API involved so it can be redistributed.

There simply isn't enough information available about where the money is going to make any judgements about whether or not it is being improperly spent.

ASSumptions

At what point have I ever, EVER, in my very long history of commenting on El Reg been an "open source advocate?" I am a cynic: everything has flaws.

I am sorry you feel "my attitude is childish," but the reality is that i simply don't like the damned ribbon bar. I don't see where there is FUD in that. I stated a personal preference, and you got your hackles up. I have been forced to use Office 2007 since the earliest beta we could get hold of, and then office 2010 since the earliest beta we could get hold of for it. As a sysadmin it's part of my job to learn how to use the newest technology. It doesn't mean i have to (or do) like the crap I have to use. I simply learn to use and (and do use it for hours every day as part of my job) because it is my job.

As to what a stupid debate like Android versus iPhone has to do with the ridiculously pointless thread: it’s an example of how people who get so entrenched in their defensive little camp are completely incapable of see anything as not an attack on their way of living/believing/doing things/etc.

Whip out an Android phone in front of an iPhone user and (in my experience) the iPhone user becomes instantly defensive. Some of them are for some reason so threatened by its very existence the immediately go on the offensive: attacking and insulting the phone, the person and everything related to it. Rather a shock when you are just checking your mail. (I have never had anyone go after my Blackberry like they do my Android phone, which is odd since I have had blackberries for about 6 years, and my Android phone for about four days…)

In this case, I made the statement that I don’t like Office 2007 or 2010. In fact, I deeply abhor both products. Part of this is the UI, but a large part of it the arrogance associated with the UI. In my opinion, radical changes to the UI in a product such as Office (or Windows) should have the option of either reverting to the old UI, or having an overly (such as UBit menu) to ease the transition. In the case of Office 2007, the Ribbon bar was thrown at us with a great big “fuck you” and a format change to try to force everyone into uptake.

When you combine that with the fact that I have found nothing about the ribbon bar to love then yes, I deeply, DEEPLY dislike the product. I will stick with Office 2003, and when the time comes to migrate away from it for whatever reason it won’t be to further versions of Office when and where it can be avoided. I will put my time and effort into converting to Open Office, a product I can make look like whatever I should want.

It isn’t about the money. I personally intent to donate the cost of a Microsoft Office license to the Open Office project for every single copy of Open Office I deploy. It’s about choice, and it’s about not having someone else’s idea of a good UI or their personal preferences rammed down my throat without having any say in the matter.

If you don’t like to hear about my personal preferences you are perfectly capable of not reading comments by me. I on the other hand don’t have the luxury of (at least at work) not using Office, and what I consider to be its terrible, TERRIBLE UI. When and where I can exercise my own rights to enforce my personal preferences, (such as my home computers, or recommendations to friends and colleagues,) I will push remaining on Office 2003 or supporting Open Office with every bit of effort I can muster.

If you wish, you can take my opinion and feelings as whatever verb you want, but it simply doesn’t change that I think the ribbon bar is an unholy piece of ever-loving shit and I will do everything in my power to avoid the bloody thing for as long as I live.

Including giving the money I would have spent on Microsoft to their competitors.

With a big huge smile on my face.

Please understand that I say this as a systems administrator whose job largely relies on Microsoft. I believe Microsoft have some of the best server offerings out there. I could talk all day about the good products Microsoft have, just as I can about the bad. In this case, I honestly believe that those responsible for the direction of Microsoft Office have failed. It is my personal opinion, and of course you are free to disagree, but what I see as a failure to be responsive to the requests and requirements of their customers has led me to abandon Microsoft’s Office offerings.

To such a point that I am in the process of migrating 7 out of 12 networks I am responsible almost entirely away from Microsoft’s interconnected Office offerings to alternatives. Open Office as a productivity package, Jabber instead of Office Communications Server, Evolution + MAPI to talk to Exchange, (Exchange is still the best IMHO,) and more. Call me names if you want, but you will not change what I believe.

@AC

"The Authors attitude is exactly the "IT Crowd" mentality that will ensure that IT staff will never be looked upon as a professionals by their business colleagues."

I'd love you to qualify that statement. I don't remember once saying that I was calling for NoScript in the bulk of a business environment. The solution for corporates is DNS Blacklisting. (Which is what my next few articles are about.) I in no way expect the users to be computer experts; in fact I have come to terms with the concept that the vast majority of them probably couldn't understand the difference between Firefox and IE if you gave them a ten week seminar.

It's not their job to know that. It is their job to know some basics of how to use computers. For certain individuals in my company, I do encourage the use of NoScript on their corporate machines, but only because these individuals are "advanced users" who are both capable of understanding its use and far more likely to poke around where they shouldn't be online.

When a staff member brings me a personal computer and asks me to set it up for them, you are damned right I try to teach them NoScript. If I am taking my personal (not company paid for) time to help them set up their home computer, then I am going to at least /try/ to teach them good digital hygiene. The vast majority of them rather like the concept, once they understand it.

Seriously though, if you honestly believe I storm around work all day pretending that “root” means “god” then I wholeheartedly encourage you to come down and pay me a visit. You can watch a sysadmin in their native environment, and realise that there are quite a few of us would actually enjoy helping our co-workers.

In fact, the biggest problem I encounter at work is people simply not telling me when something has gone pear-shaped. I can’t help you if I don’t know what the issue is. Sadly, there are always people who get hostile and unreasonable because I am not a god and thus don’t know everything there is to know.

If my “business colleagues” are incapable of looking upon my efforts to assist them in doing their jobs as professional, then I would have to say the fault lies with them. Their prejudice and need to fear and segregate what they don’t understand is the barrier, not a genuine desire to help and enable on my part. Sadly, there are people who cling to archaic stereotypes in any situation. In my opinion those people are a detriment to any business, as business must be capable of adapting to reality. In fact my experience has taught me that businesses that adapt the quickest are the only ones that survive.

@Colin Millar

...with the bank? The technology exists to make online banking secure. It is used by some banks on this earth. Yet for some reason i can't work down to my bank and get secure cards that generate a set of one time keys for authentication, use a combination of biometrics and passwords or any of a dozen more secure methods of accessing my accounts than the crap we have today.

In fact, the banks have introduced a “secure” new chip-and-pin system that they have managed to get legally enshrined as somehow “uncrackable.” It isn’t, and the only reason they’ve spent billions on it was to ensure that when people DO have their identities stolen/accounts jacked/etc. that they aren’t liable for it.

If I had the option, I wouldn’t be relying on a bank where I had to worry about things like NoScript. I am a user too, you know. I want my banking to be just like a TV. Turn it on, pick up the remote and it works. The part that frustrates me is that because I am a sysadmin I know the technology exists to do a better job, but all of the banks available in Canada absolutely and completely refuse to not suck.

Off topic

As a pure hypothetical, although I really should know this, If you break a super-deluxe uber news story that alters the balance of power as regards life, the universe and everything then you get a Pulitzer, right? (Assuming it is well written.) I was however always under the impression that the internet was an invisible wall to this: the fact that The Register doesn't have a print edition means that it would be (at least politically given the current climate) impossible.

Now admittedly I’m not all that up on who gets the Pulitzer when and for what, (which given that I rather like journalism I probably should have an interest in,) but I seem to recall some pretty big anti-internet prejudices in the journalism community. Yes? No? Am I totally out to lunch on this one?

@Tom Maddox

Agreed. There are a very, very few people I would truly cheer the death of, and he is not one of them. I disagreed with the man in every way imaginable, but there is something deeply wrong about actually cheering someone's demise.

That said, I will cheer the fact that he no longer has influence, even while I am greatly saddened it took his death to achieve said result.

Hmm

I should have phrased that differently. "For the record, “The Independent” has proven itself to no longer be high on my list of reputable resources…" is incorrect. It implied The Independent was at one point high on my list of reputable resources. I really hadn't heard of it until now, so that would be impossible. It's gone from "unknown resource" to "shite" in a short timeframe however.

@Andrew O

Again, it is a matter of proactive versus reactive. The net has always been neutral in that access to information has not (with very rare exceptions) been prevented. Companies can and do discriminate traffic based on protocol, but the traffic will eventually get from point A to point B.

The exception to this has always tended to be filtering illegal traffic: cutting off spammers, or prevention of individuals within a country from access information their government deems wrong.

The issue at hand is whether or not to allow the corporations that own the pipes and own the content to block you from accessing parts of the internet. I don’t give a rat’s if they want to discriminate based on protocol. So long as there are least two ISPs in a given area to chose from, there should be enough competition that they will eventually get into a war based on who will filter your traffic less.

If we allow ISPs to own content, or to form deep alliances with content owners then we enter entirely other territory. There is now suddenly a business case for preventing (or at the very least deprioritising) access to services offered by rival cabals. There may even be reason to prevent access to blogs, media outlets or what-have-you that deliver a message contrary to that which the cabal in questions wishes it’s customers to have access to.

You say that we should not legislate against this until after it has happened. I call that bizarre and dangerous. It seems we are at a complete impasse here; our opinions will likely never be reconciled. The ability to charge different rates based on the ORIGIN, DESTINATION or ACTUAL CONTENT (not PROTOCOL TYPE) of traffic is my beef. That is net neutrality to me; keeping the access to information 100% open, and preferably enshrined in law.

Enshrined as a human right, if at all possible. I do not believe that it should be a human right to have X Mbit internet access or free access to the latest episode of Survivor. But it damned well should be a human right to consume any freely available information without prejudice, and to have the opportunity to pay for and receive any information behind a paywall without prejudice.

If I pay for HTTP traffic, I should receive all HTTP traffic from all sources without prejudice or prioritisation. If my ISP is partnered with NBC they should not be preventing or deprioritising traffic to/from the BBC. Similarly, if my ISP is partnered with FOX, they shouldn’t be preventing or deprioritising my access to left-wing websites or anything that actually provides access to provable facts or scientific research.

Has anyone done this yet? No. It is however only a matter of time. If any corporation in the position to do thinks for a fraction of a second it can “generate revenue” but doing so then it will be done. Corporations don’t have morals; they have only the pursuit of the almighty dollar. The possibility that corporations will prevent or deprioritise access to information in order to either gain competitive advantage or shape public discourse is a threat. It should be dealt with accordingly.

Nice redirection with the malaria thing though. It’s nice to know what our societies must obviously solve problems in an arbitrarily defined hierarchy. “Don’t worry about this problem, that problem is far worse!” Personally I believe that preventing any entity, from governments to corporate cabals from controlling information in such a way as to effectively control the public at large is THE most important issue in the entire world. You will never convince me otherwise.

If the rich and powerful have total information control then nothing will ever be solved. Why? They became rich and powerful because of how things are; any change at all is a direct threat to them.

This then is why I revered good investigative journalists growing up. The ones who didn’t let their stories get killed, and who stood up for telling the truth regardless of who wanted what parts cut. I was lucky enough to know a few growing up, and frankly it’s why I like reading The Register. There are the rare folks around here who “speak truth to power” even when it’s inconvenient.

Personally, I will not stand idly by while there is any potential threat to the free flow of information. Access to information needs to become more open, not less. We certainly don’t have completely free access to information now, but that should never be used as an excuse to allow further restriction.

It needs to be used as a reason to identify areas where access to information is restricted and fight those barriers with everything we as citizens can bring to bear. (With acceptable barriers for individual privacy. I don’t believe corporations or governments should have the rights of individuals, and so in all honesty I don’t believe in corporate or governmental rights to privacy.)

I’m sorry if you feel I’m a whackjob for believing that, but that belief is part of the very core of who I am, and has been for as long as I can remember. I also believe in being proactive about threats, from computer maintenance to corporate malfeasance. Placing an outer marker on information control and manipulation isn’t the equivalent of corporate pre-crime. It’s letting everyone; from corporations and governments to individuals know where the line is, and establishing penalties for crossing it before someone tries.

If you were starting up a new country, would you wait until the first murder before outlawing it? Or less alarmist; would you wait until the first town/university/church group tried to censor access to information they didn't like before you declared such activates illegal? If you wouldn’t, they why wait until after access to information on the internet has been curtailed before declaring such activities verboten? At what point do we start learning from the past and proactively working to better our collective future?

*sigh*

AnotherNetNarcissist: between Office 2007 and Office 2010 I have indeed been forced to use the bloody things for years. Personally, I hate them. You might have your reasons for liking them, and bully for you. I also use an Android phone not an iPhone, in case you wanted had other personal preferences of mine you wanted to take objection to.

I don't like the interface. At all. End of.

I have used it for long enough to know how it works, and I don't CARE why they thought it was a good idea. I don't like it, and the beautiful part about life, the universe and everything...

...I don't have to.

@Seb123

I know that you /can/ run android on an iPhone. I have done so. That said, there are several countries in which doing so isn't legal, because it violates the T&Cs not just for OSX, but apparently for the hardware itself. Which is my point. The mere fact that we can have T&Cs on hardware in some countries is something I find appalling.

@Lottie

This is exactly what I was thinking. I thought that wiki's rules for sources basically amounted to "if it's in print, or it's on teh intarwebs somewhere then we can use at as a Wikipedia source." So in this case, someone defaces a Wikipedia page, which then makes it into a newspaper which can be used as an "accurate and reliable source" to keep the defamation on the Wikipedia page thus....

...what?

I don't know, honestly. Inventing a "fact?" Is there even a word for that kind of information manipulation? This is why I honestly believe that trusting Wikipedia is as bad as reading a history book without keeping the axiom "history is written by the victors" in the back of your mind. Filtering bias from crowd sourced information is bloody near impossible.

Primary sources, please. I'll make my judgements as to the reliability of the information I receive based on the reputations of the individuals and organisations that perform the original research. For the record, “The Independent” has proven itself to no longer be high on my list of reputable resources…

@AnotherNetNarcissist

Oh, You can load Android on an iPhone. I haven't gotten the radio to work yet...but I can watch movies...

@AC

You certainly can load another O/S on your Mac.

But not on your iPhone. (At least not legally...)

@ITWillSaveTheWorld

Or, Anonymous could download WOT and poison the DB for a given site if they want. Yes, it has its flaws...but overall it's a lot more effort for the bad guys to game the system then they gain from it.

Office 2010 can eat 10,000...

...well, let's not finish that sentence.

Office 2003 for me, thank you. When I take the time to convert to something else, it's going to be something open. (I say this as someone forced to use both Office 2007 and Office 2010 for years. Long enough to be happy I kept my home systems on Office 2003 and open office.)

For the record, I don't have a beard. I do have a moustache though….and I trimmed it this morning, thankyouverymuch.

@David Eddleman

Why in the name of $deity would anyone fire a weapon on automatic unless they were trying to kill someone, or training to do exactly that?

There’s no possible reason except killing another person to even own an automatic weapon. (Semi-autos I actually don’t have much of a problem with.)

@frank ly

You felt the shiver of fear because you didn't think it through. A great big ball of ice, say at most a dozen kilometres in circumference is a whacking amount of fuel. It’s also an enormous pain in the rear to de orbit from wherever it is and park it anywhere near earth. Go up much bigger than a dozen or so kilometres and you are getting hundreds of years past our current technology. (As it is, even at a dozen kilometres, there would be about 30 years of R&D required before the first attempt.)

The thing is, a dozen kilometres of ice doesn’t mean anything to earth. If you miss with a ball that size, it will completely vaporise before hitting the surface. We’re not even talking about Tunguska here. We’re talking nice fireball in the sky followed by an interesting cloud of vapour. Now without an atmosphere, the moon would be at risk. Drop a dozen-kilometre ice ball into the surface and watch the kinetic energy both vaporise all of the ice and turn a sizable chunk of the surface into a shiny new (molten) crater. I don’t know how long it would take that crater to solidify, but given there’s no atmosphere to absorb the heat; I suspect it would be quite some time. (Radiative transmission and absorption of heat by the surrounding rock being the only methods of shedding the heat.)

So in short: you could do that in such a way as it would pose almost no risk to Earth, but I wouldn’t want to be living on a moon base when that sucker came by. (Not to mention the damage it could do to the cloud of Earth-orbiting debris we keep launching up there.)

The best solution is not to drop it onto the moon or even to attempt to park it in Earth orbit. The best solution is to drop fuel asteroids like this into the Lagrange points. They are stable places to leave things lying around, and currently largely unoccupied. This is not a difficult thing to do. Send a big-ish robot to some random iceball. Try to smack into it with as much force as you can muster, and have what amounts to an MCV pop out of the crater. (The impact hopefully being in the direction you want the asteroid to go. No sense wasting the kinetic energy you build up getting there.) The MCV deploys, uses some of the water for reaction mass on hall thrusters and deploys as big a solar sail as we can pack into the thing. It might take 50 years to move that asteroid, but at least we could do it safely.