Posts by Kevin Pollock

Finally moving to Mac

I recently picked up a drive-by infection on my desktop PC (the AntiMalware Doctor infection).

Having spent about a day trying to get rid of it with Malwarebytes (usually a good solution), I gave up and just reached for my Acronis image to do a "nuke and pave".

Even though I operate my PC in a way that's easy for me to recover, I still lost about a day of productive time.

So after years of resisting all things Apple I just ordered a Macbook Pro. I'll still run Office etc. using Parallels, but I'll do all my browsing through OSX from now on. I assume I'll have to start wearing more pastel shades of polo shirt too :-)

By the way - I'd also recommend a sandboxed browser option like Sandboxie. It's free and it works pretty well. If I'd remembered to launch the sandboxed browser instead of my default browser I could have avoided the infection.

Cheers,

SPuD

Other ways to protect users

Comrades,

I used to work for a content security company who won a deal with a major ISP for a similar capability (ie. detection of infected broadband subscribers). In that case the equipment simply monitored outbound traffic from the subscriber to detect Port 25 packets. This gave an extremely high probability that this subscriber was infected, and was acting as part of a botnet.

(Note, I know that botnet technology has moved on, but even today a simple Port 25 test would probably find over 90% of user infections).

Note that the tiny % of ISP customers who run their own mail servers (and therefore generate legitimate Port 25 traffic) can request to be put on a "white list" so they do not receive repeated warnings.

The company I worked for unfortunately was not successful commercially. The problem is that, while it is useful for an ISP's customers to be warned if they are infected, there is nothing in it for the ISP. It's not worth the ISP paying for the solution.

This leads the ISP to consider dodgy systems like Phorm, and maybe the one described here. In other words the ISP tries to make some money out of it.

I spoke to a number of security guys in some very large ISPs around the world and they told me that they thought that 25-33% of their subscribers were infected.

This did not surprise me because the average UK broadband user has no clue about how to protect themselves on the Net.

TalkTalk may well have had the good of their customers in mind here - let's give them the benefit of the doubt. But they don't seem to have handled this situation very well. If they had been honest with their users it would have been much easier for them. I guess ISPs never learn.

Also, FYI, TalkTalk does not have Ellacoya DPI boxes in their network (unlike other UK ISPs like BT). They use Sandvine boxes instead. The Sandvine boxes are not in-line with user data, so they do not have the same active DPI capabilities as a result.

Cheers,

SPuD

What about the backhaul?

I am served by a semi-rural BT Market 1 exchange. For foreigners that means there is no unbundling - and there are so few people on the exchange that unbundling is almost inconceivable. Regardless of who my retail ISP is, the traffic is actually carried on the BT Wholesale network.

My local loop is still ADSL, so I'm on an "up to 8Mb/s" service. I actually get about 7Mb/s on the DSL router, and can sustain about 5Mb/s on my RapidShare downloads.

So all in all I'm really happy with the download speed. The upload speed is shite - about 300kb/s. So video calls are tenuous at best. VoIP usually works OK.

My exchange is due for a 21CN upgrade to ADSL2+ in 2011, which should allow me to get 18Mb/s to the exchange, from the dB numbers I see on the router. I may get about 750kb/s on the uplink if I'm lucky.

But it's the backhaul speed that will limit me - at least for downloading.

What is the point of "superfast broadband" in the local loop if BT continues to lag on the upgrades to the backhaul and core network?

What is the point of any speed upgrades if my monthly bandwidth is capped by BT or the retail ISP?

Why are ISPs still allowed to call these services "unlimited"?

SPuD

@ blah5

A couple of comments...

I will take your advice on trying OO again on XP, thanks for that reminder.

I know Edward Tufte's essay very well. It's a good read, and he makes some excellent points. But crap presenters are still crap presenters with or without Powerpoint. :-) I think it's an excellent observational piece though.

I freely acknowledge Powerpoint gives crap presenters some interesting new ways to screw up! A bit like Desktop publishing software gave people who had no intrinsic document design skills interesting new ways to write ransom notes.

I'd also like to re-interate that I said "a lot of people use Powerpoint", not that they are dependent on it. Nobody should depend on any specific application to do their job (unless they're a developer for that application). Powerpoint is a useful way to store, organise, and present information, and it does those things better than anything else on the market today (even the Apple thingy - Keynote?).

As for being soured on Impress by one moderator. Well he was the moderator of a developer forum. I saw many comments about the poor graphics capabilities of Impress. And to be honest it was pretty par for the course for those kind of techie-focused forums. Anyone who mentions a customer-related issue tends to be dismissed as a "marketing dweeb".

In fact it makes me laugh that the Linux community has managed to develop a totally useless, but very pretty 3D desktop in the form of Beryl, but can't even get simple Powerpoint animations right.

My comments are focused on the Powerpoint/Impress "feature gap" because I tend to push Powerpoint to its limits. If I was a power user of Word or Excel I'm sure I'd be able to list reasons why the OO equivalents are not up to par. You pointed out the database deficiencies, for example.

I suppose you could argue that with OO being "good enough" for a free office application it becomes a barrier for a commercial company to create a real MS Office killer.

To be successful on the desktop, Linux needs a truly professional Office suite. Open Office is not it. End of story.

Cheers,

SPuD

Central Number?

Well...maybe. But it would add at least one extra level of hierarchy to the numeric menu system.

A freephone number for each major department would be preferable.

Let's put this NASA pen vs Russian pencil myth to bed shall we?

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

- BOTH countries began by using pencils

- Pencils are dangerous in space (explained in the link)

- A private company designed a pen to meet space requirements - they were not asked to do so by NASA

- NASA didn't pay a penny towards the development

- The pen worked as required, and was subsequently used by BOTH USA and Russia

- It is also available to buy if that takes your fancy

Apple TV killer?

Looks to me like it goes up against the Apple TV.

But on the UK Apple Store the 160G Apple TV is £263. If Acer is sayng "below $300", which could mean $299.99, then in Ripoff Britain then can we expect to pay £300?

If so this is a tricky choice.

Apple TV is cheaper, more polished (inevitably), has Front Row, and looks as gorgeous as any other Apple product.

The Acer is a PC, so it'll be hampered by Media Centre, is running Vista (gag reflex), so the 1.6GHz Atom vs the Apple's 1GHz Crofton might not make as much difference in performance as one would think. But the Acer is more open, and you're not tied to the Big Brother of iTunes. you theoretically get a faster CPU, graphics hardware assist, nice chunk of memory (at least 1G of which, of course, Vista will not be able to use as it's a 32-bit OS). You get a bigger hard disc.

The Acer may or may not be able to play PC games, as Roger pointed out for reasons of disc protection (and assuming one stays honest and resist the opportunity to download the no-CD hacks).

My first impressions - it needs to be the same price as the Apple TV to compete - and the remote has to be excellent. By the way your review doesn't mention what kind of remote and/or keyboard options will be provided. I think the product might sink or swim depending on its usability.

@AC what are the threats?

Just to clarify there are two distinct issues:

- Because Huawei is providing the MSANs for (theoretically) 50% of the 5,500 telephone exchanges in 21CN then these devices could be used to intercept phone calls or internet traffic.

- Because Huawei is providing optical transmission for 21CN, then China could simply "switch off" (or threaten to switch off) these devices in the event of some conflict. I suppose also that Huawei could introduce "bugs" or other issues to these devices so that it wasn't immediately obvious that this was a deliberate attack.

The security service report says that while these events are unlikely, the impact if they were to happen is highly significant.

As other people have pointed out, various aspects of UK communications and defence are now provided by foreign suppliers. Even items we might think of as Made in Britain use components or software created abroad.

I'm really not sure how credible these threats are. But in terms of conflict with China, we've certainly has our spats in the not too distant past (Tibet, for example). You have to think that using the "Huawei off switch" is only going to be possible once - so our disagreement would have to be pretty significant :-)

@Steve in Manchester

Hi Steve,

Actually I think VDSL would be ideal for folks like you who currently have a long copper loop out to the exchange. As I understand it (disclaimer alert), if BT deploy VDSL at your exchange they would run a fibre cable to within a short distance of your home. Exactly how close they would come is dependent on several logistical, technical and local planning factors. But the idea is they'd cut out a lot of that 4 mile copper local loop, and only use the last 100m or so of existing copper cable into your home.

So despite the fact that you're so far from the exchange, you'd still get these high speeds of VDSL connection. You'd then find that the bottleneck becomes the backhaul from your exchange, as I described above.

Arbitration, not law courts?

This poor woman had her life ruined by some animal in a bar. An animal, by the way, who recently repeated his "outburst".

For those of you who think this lady "doesn't look that special" maybe you'd like to consider how you'd feel if this was your friend, your sister, your daughter or your girlfriend. Whatever we might feel about the "value" of a modelling career, she is a human being.

Her entire career was based on how she looks, and she lost it in a second. As somebody who would never make a career from my looks the nearest comparision I could make is if that stupid git of a doorman had whacked me on the head and left me brain damaged.

Is a legal challenge the right way to deal with this? Well, personally I think it's overkill. But what other response does she have? Free speech is one thing, but when that argument is used to justify everything from ignorant insults through to right wing neo-nazism, maybe there ought to be a way to ask blog sites to just take the offensive content down.

The problem is, of course, who decides what is offensive? In this case I think it's clear cut. this entire blog is a callous tirade against an innocent individual. It has no value. Take it down.

Snappy German translation

OK, there HAS to be a single German word for synergy-related headcount reduction. I don't speak German so I fiddled with Babel Fish for few seconds.

It's the word "related" I seem to be having a problem with. Any German scholars out there who can help?

Best I can do so far is Synergieverbundenangestellterbeseitigung. It seems altogether too "hasty" as the Ents would say.

NAT isn't all bad...

NAT is a mega-kludge,there's no doubt about that.

As several people have mentiojned, it was "invented" (I prefer "congealed") to help sort out the IPv4 address exhaustion issue. But along the way we discovered something quite useful when we use it.

Port Address Translation (whch is actually what we're referring to here) allows us to use private IP addressing in the home or office, and pipe all that traffic through a single (or smal number of) public IPv4 addresses.

By the way - even if we do reclaim every unused IPv4 address there still won't be enough to go araound - with or without NAT/PAT.

The ability to use private addressing is a useful way to make home networking "plug and play" (sort of), and is also useful for network security purposes. I'm sure there are may other examples of why it's useful.

So even if IPv6 was wdely adopted, I suspect most people would retain PAT to allow us to deploy private IPv6 address space "inside" the firewall - both at home and in the office. At that point all the NAT/PAT problems listed here are still there. They don't go away just because you use bigger addresses. PAT inherrently removes the end to end paradigm (oh feck, I used the "p" word" - don't forget to mark your BullShit Bingo cards) of the Internet.

Even if I moved to IPv6 native (not tunneled), I would still have to set up port forwarding to my eMule server on my home network. And that eMule server would till have to be given a static IP address, not DHCP.

I do acknowledge that NAT or PAT are dreadful kludges, but you have to admit it's a miracle they work at all. A genuine triumph of brute force over...well ingorance is a rather churlish word, but you know what I mean.

@Paul Hurst

...sorry Paul, but I don't really see your point.

The amount of petrol used by your lawnmower, chainsaw etc. will be minute compared to your car(s). You can't scupper a good idea for such a minority case.

And your point about offroad car use also. I suspect the vast majority of UK car owners generate more miles on public roads than private or off road. Once again, as Mr.Spock would say "the good of the many...etc.". The last time I drove "off road" was parking in a field for a car boot sale.

In all of these cases petrol driven appliances and off-road car use is still causing carbon emissions, which is part of the rationale behind road pricing.

So I have to disagree with you and would say that an increase in fuel taxes is the simplest, and most effective way to encourage less car use.

On the other hand, increasing fuel tax is also an inflationary move, so in the current economic climate I'm not sure the spineless Wimps of Wesminster would go for it.

Much better to chuck billions into a new IT Money Pit. Tossers.

Cheers,

Kev.

Imagine the scene at Number 10...

Like TeeCee says, they completely misunderstood the issue (maybe they chose to misunderstand it, as opposed to just being clueless). It's the backhaul contention rates that need to be policed. Local loop is a different problem (ie. one of over-zealous advertising claims, like "up to XMbps", and Virgin claiming that HFC is really fibre).

I can imagine the Downing Street PR person thinking "gosh, I've been lumbered with writing a response but don't really understand the issue at all, who can I ask? I know, I'll ask BT." Even worse they may have asked an "independent consultant" - who used to work for BT!

And the BT "expert" immediately sets the topic as being about local loop, not backhaul. After all, BT has just announced their "massive" investment in fibre in the local loop (it's a drop in the ocean, and they're using it as leverage for regulatory concessions, but hey).

Actually I suppose we can't blame the politicians too much - whom do they ask for advice? To paraphrase an old adage - "who will provide us with the expert advice to argue against the experts?"

Every expert I know has an axe to grind, or an agenda to promote - including me!

@GrahamT

Hi Graham. Thanks for that.

Indeed these batteries do seem to have extremely good forecast lifetimes. I was interested to learn from various Wikipedia articles that there's a market for recycled car batteries for reuse in home generator systems.

Do you think manufacturers will recycle batteries into new vehicles? It strikes me that manufacturer warranties are so generous these days that they usually want to make sure everything in the car is totally quality-controlled. While the recycled battery could be explicitly excluded from the warranty, I assume a faulty battery could also damage the electric motors, or other parts of the electrical system.

I suppose if you stuck to the same make of car so there was continuity of service history...good opportunity for car manufacturers to lock us into the authorised dealer network!

Sizewize the time is right...

...for wristwatch phones.

I bought a couple of wristwatch radios for laughs a couple of years ago. They're ludicrously bulky, as these LG watches appear to be also.

But when you consider the size of modern "designer" watches, it's not so crazy after all.

Consider the Breitling Bentley Mulliner Tourbillon (http://www.breitlingforbentley.com/en/).

This watch is almost 50mm in diameter! And I gather it's pretty thick - maybe 20mm or more. And you can bet it weighs a ton too.

But one question - how does one text one-handed on a wrist phone?

Missing the point

While it's delightful to hear that Virgin might offer 50Meg services to a selected few, we need to remember that the local connection speed isn't the whole picture.

Most DSL broadband users in the UK are subjected to quite a high contention ratios on the backhaul link between the local exchange and the BT wholesale network. These contention ratios are claimed not to exceed 50:1 for residential services, but it's virtually impossible for an ordinary user to measure it.

As we frequently hear - the broadband "experience" frequently fails to deliver anything like the advertised 16Meg, 8Meg or even 2Meg service claimed by the ISP.

The bottleneck that causes the performance problems can be in many places along the end to end path, but the most likely point of contention right now is that "second mile", or backhaul link.

Virgin has their own backhaul that's separate from BT, but both NTL and Telewest have had a freeze of network capacity upgrades while the network consolidation has been under way since the merger. Virgin is also deep in debt, and so it's not clear how they'd fund a major network upgrade at this time.

DSL ISPs are at the mercy of BT Wholesale, who have not yet delivered the "21st Century Network" they promised. It's not late yet (2010 was originally mentioned), but it's needed sooner than BT thought.

And even where an exchange is unbundled, and the ISP has their own DSLAM, they still need to connect that DSLAM back into the rest of the network - and that is usually done over BT Wholesale links.

So if there's one company that needs to get its finger out and start delivering more capacity it's good old BT.

And by the way - what's the point of access speeds measured in tens of megabits when the "Fair Use Agreements" will (in many cases) result in throttling after you've downloaded only a couple of GBytes?

Re: i CANT SEE IT WORKING

Hi Mike,

I can't either, but to your point about camcorder video vs "professional" video. Anyone out there who goes to footie matches (I don't personally) might want to read the terms and conditions on the ticket. It's quite possible they've thought of this one and have included some kind of limitation on the use of home video.

Cheers,

Kev