* Posts by Steve Evans

2772 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007

Dozens of exploits released for popular SCADA programs

Steve Evans

Re: Isolated from the Network

Ah yes... Lesson 101.1

Remove user access to any ports (preferably physically as well as in software), especially those that permit storage devices to be attached!

Steve Evans

Security 101...

As usual I'm sure these systems would be fine if they had been installed with a correct security mindset. Namely keeping critical systems isolated. If they must co-habit a network, use a firewall. All rules denied by default. No traffic goes to or from the critical subnet except for specific and required protocols. Even these are locked down so only specific machines can use specific protocols. Deep packet inspection would also be preferable.

Unfortunately we have all got a far different idea of how these systems have been installed... I can only assume the only reason an exploit hasn't been found for critical systems like autopilot is not so much due to any diligence on behalf of the designers/maintainers, but a lack of a cat 5 cable long enough to remain connected to the 747!

Apple sues Amazon over 'App Store' name

Steve Evans

If apple have their way...

In twenty years the only people on the planet with any money will be lawyers.

Oh, and BMW salesmen.

Apple - grow up.

US patent and trademark system - sort yourself out! If you keep this up the rest of the world will be shortly joining China and just ignore it!

'iPad cads' dash fanboi fondleslab hopes

Steve Evans

Re: It's not about the numbers

I assume you are talking about the recent Golf in old clothing Beetle, and not the Fuhrers people car that he pumped off the production line in huge volumes before deciding it would be more fun to invade Poland, France and then make a very ill advised stab at Russia just as winter approached?

Wi-Fi security befuddles clueless home users

Steve Evans

A bit scaremongering...

Although most members of the public have no idea what WEP or WPA2 are, most of these people will be using the router supplied by Sky/BT etc... Which come with security turned on and a little sticker on the bottom giving them the key. I've been to fix countless computers as various homes and asked "Do you know your wireless password?", I get the same blank look, so I just pick the router up and look on the bottom.

The only people at risk are those with enough technical knowledge to change their router, and somehow configure their ISP connection details, but not manage the wireless, like AC 16:42's neighbour.

Phone, car companies collaborate to connect cars, phones

Steve Evans

Curious...

I see one thing is marked as "done" by "Nokia"... Have they checked recently, they might have thrown this out with the bath water the other week!

Group-buying deal for £99 iPhone 4 may have breached consumer laws

Steve Evans

Re: If it were Paddington

Yes, but I believe Paddington's stares really hurt.

Apple handcuffs 'open' web apps on iPhone home screen

Steve Evans

What?

Apple throttle free web apps in preference to "real" (paid for) downloaded applications, 90% of which are little more than a wrapper round a public website which could be handled in HTML/CSS with media="handheld" or "@media handheld" by any half competent web designer?

Not to mention said webdesigner would then have a site suitable for iphone, Android and Micronokia all in one go...

Nah, I don't believe it.

Windows 7 customers hit by service pack 1 install 'fatal error' flaws

Steve Evans
Joke

Ooooh...

Looks like Windows 7 and WinMob 7 really are closely related!

Another year, another iPhone time slip

Steve Evans

Hehe...

Ah good, a bit more ammo to bait my iphone owning friends with... Good old Apple, knew you wouldn't let me down.

Seriously though this is getting a bit beyond a joke, even M$ have managed to get windows to do this correctly, so we all know that means it can't be that hard!

As has been observed above, Apple have fallen for the all too common habit of clearing bugs from the fault list as fast as possible to make figures look good. Testing them would make the clearing task slower, so testing goes out the window... and the bug comes back a bit further down the list - that's okay though, as nobody seems to link the new bug to a previous cleared report and point out that a clock fault has existed for several years.

Japanese nuke meltdown may be underway

Steve Evans

Hmmm...

Would the down-voter, presumably a west coast USA resident, like to make himself known and explain the urge to live on a fault zone?

Steve Evans

Re: Lots of "told ya so"s

They don't really have a choice, their entire country is an earthquake zone!

The USA do have a choice, but they still built SF on a fault... And then rebuilt it when it get destroyed!

Why Nokia failed: 'Wasted 2,000 man years' on UIs that didn't work

Steve Evans

@The problem with this recent news is that we get two types of people

Actually, I think I might be type #3...

I liked Symbian, used if from the 7650, 6600, N70, N95 and last the N97... But now I "dislike" Nokia. They used to have a reputation like IBM... i.e. "Nobody ever got sacked for buying a Nokia". It would work. The N95 showed some initial signs of problems, but they were quickly fixed via firmware... I should have taken that as a warning. the N97 was diabolical. Glad you 5800 GPS worked, but plenty of N97 owners aren't so lucky. Google "N97 GPS hack" and see! Yes I did try that, and it was still unfit for directing a car moving faster than walking pace.

You learn a lot about a company over how it handles a faulty product (any company can look good if its products just work), and after the N97 I felt I had been mugged. In no way was it the phone from the TV advert.

I tried various support routes, I got nowhere. Nokia's customers are the networks, they don't give a damn about Joe Public, just as long as the networks keep pre-ordering their handsets. Trouble is the networks now have plenty more manufacturers they can sell, and Joe Public remembers his buggy Nokia and won't buy another.

Sure my Desire Z is newer than the N97, but the N97 is newer than the original iphone, but the iphone was still far nicer to use.

My N97 is now consigned to the draw of history (I might attack the GPS antenna again out of boredom and see if anything can be fixed), my back up phone will remain my trusty old original N95 (Euro hacked model code with V30 firmware).

Steve Evans

For me...

The terrible product (N97) was bad, but the after sales really nailed their coffin shut.

Obviously there were things the N97 could never do, so no firmware update would ever give it multitouch or anything like that, but basic faults like a GPS which couldn't hold a lock at more than walking speed when Nokia were giving away free turn by turn satnav was just ridiculous.

Delays in firmware updates as Nokia let carriers decide when/if their customers were allowed updates just left people stuck with old firmware, and old bugs that were fixed months ago. Not that Joe Public knew any of this, he just knew his Nokia was a lemon and bought something else next time round.

The latter issue could be worked round by changing the model ID of the phone to a generic Euro one, guess what, you couldn't mention this to anyone suffering a problem which was already fixed on the Nokia forums! If you did one of the pocket Hitler mods would pull the post and tell you off. I even tried to explain that if Joe Public thinks his Nokia is crap he won't buy one next time, and eventually you won't have anyone to moderate in the forum, but have to give up in the face stubborn stupidity.

After over 10 years of loyal Nokia (and Symbian) ownership I finally jumped last month. I was so fed up with my N97 which I'm still stuck in a contract for, I went out and paid real money for an Android based HTC Desire Z, and do you know what, it's fan-bloody-tastic! I've had it for a month and it's just worked, perfectly, no weird errors, loads of great free apps. I've even got round to starting to write some apps for it, something I did try to do with Symbian a couple of times, but on both occasions the development environment wouldn't even compile their own example code, so I gave up on that idea!

As you say, Nokia's navigation of their randomly changing road map would make for a good depressing film, but I doubt anyone would believe it!

Apple frees iOS 4.3 two days before iPad 2 Arrival™

Steve Evans

Hmmm

I'm feeling decidedly slow all of a sudden!

Maybe I should do a reset, turn off lookout and give it another go.

Steve Evans

Not bad benchmarks...

I (just for giggles) ran the spider on my standard HTC Desire Z running Android 2.2.1

Standard browser: 7362.5ms +/- 2.5%

Unfortunately neither Opera Mobile of Firefox4 beta on the phone can run it.

It will be interesting to compare the results when HTC release the gingerbread update.

Microsoft to Apple: 'Oh, yeah? Well, your font is too small'

Steve Evans

Re: Font Size

But just look at that line spacing, is that defined too? If not then they could get that down to 12 pages just by writing like a normal person!

How languages can live together without killing each other

Steve Evans

Time will tell...

It depends what you mean by "get along fine"... 1000 years ago Anglo-Saxon and Norman French co-existed, then ended up in the tumble-drier of linguistics and English came out.

They evolved and cross-bred, and resulted in modern English calling a cow a cow when it's in a field, and beef when it's on the plate. Something which causes natives of most other languages to raise an eyebrow.

You've got to be damn stubborn for two languages to co-exist and not influence each other. Either the infamously stubborn Académie française have failed to prevent the entire population accepting the phrase "Le weekend".

Football goal-line tracking tech delayed

Steve Evans

Excessive...

The difference between tennis, where a ball has to go a specific side of a line every couple of seconds and football, where a ball might, if you're lucky, get kicked over a line half a dozen times in the space of 90 minutes is huge!

Surely this could be adequately covered with a camera or two? 5th umpire style. It works fine for cricket and of course Rugby.

The sooner they make use of all the TV feeds which are already available, and let the ref see (or be informed by) what the world plus dog have just seen, and screamed abuse at their TV set for, the better.

Spaniards bemoan 'joke' speed limit cut

Steve Evans

Re: You are indeed slightly confused

That would of course assume that the Spanish government are actually in it for the good of the country as a whole and not their own personal gain... More money in govt kitty = more juicy contracts for friends and a healthy public service pension pot...

Maybe I've just been exposed to the UK political system too long!

Steve Evans

Slightly confused...

Why would the Spanish government care about reducing fuel imports? Feel free to correct me if I've missed anything here...

1) Spain has recently been bailed out by the EU, and is a bit short of cash.

2) Spain (as in the government) doesn't pay for the fuel, the customer does.

3) Spain (the government) will of course tax the fuel, and probably add something like VAT on as well.

4) Customers (the residents of Spain who are complaining about the new limit) buy the fuel, pay the fuel tax and pay the VAT.

5) The more fuel the customers use, the more tax will go to the government and vice versa.

So surely if everyone slowed down, the government would very quickly find itself short of cash again? A bit like the UK government would if we all stopped doing the things they "say" they want us to stop doing (and tax heavily), drinking, smoking, starting our vehicles etc.

Google vanishes 'DroidDream' malware from citizen phones

Steve Evans

Re: What was that?

No, the 'droid boys have a choice over what they put on their phone, and where they get it from. They are not subject to the whims of a single corporation and what seem like their very personal likes and dislikes.

How many times have Google pulled the switch and said "No, that's bad!", errr, once, and that's on programs that are trojans... How many times has St Jobs and pals said "No, they can't use/see/have that", probably multiple times an hour, and that will be for programs that maybe show too much flesh, or just look wrong, or maybe even let people purchase from somewhere other than the istore! Shock horror!

You've got to remember that a mobile phone is a very powerful device which is generally released into the hands of the moronic masses (If you don't think the public are that stupid just look at the viewing figures for reality TV).

For google to release a device that powerful without any way to reign it in to stop the masses from hurting themselves is akin to letting Joe Public walk about with a .44 magnum... Oh...

Steve Evans

Re: Looks like bash a network day

Actually, if MS had a kill switch it would be fundamentally flawed. Two weeks after it goes live it would be exploited and Microsoft office would magically be uninstalled from every PC on the planet!

Sinclair ZX81: 30 years old

Steve Evans

Re: Funny you should mention that

It came to mind as I had just been playing about with the Speccy emulator, Marvin on my HTC Desire!

Now if you don't mind I've just got to get past Eugene's lair...

Steve Evans

Re: You get what you pay for

It did indeed. The CPU did everything, so if you could tie it up doing something else, it wouldn't have time to do the screen.

The ZX80's screen used to flicker when you pressed buttons, purely because it was being distracted having to process the keyboard input.

The PET was a bit expensive for the home market, but I do have fond memories of them (and one in the attic). First computer I ever programmed in machine code. Still got my Rodnay Zaks' programming books on the shelf.

Somewhere I should still have the sound interface I made for the PET... By connecting onto the 6522's serial shift register.

Steve Evans

re: Doing down a rare success

I wouldn't quite say the changes shook the businesses down to nothing, more like they evolved, some died, some lived on... Have you heard of ARM? (clue, there's one in that ipad you're holding).. You do know where they came from don't you?

Steve Evans

hehe...

Oddly enough I was just playing Manic Miner... On a spectrum emulator on my mobile phone! I bet it's got loads of delay looks to stop the 800Mhz ARM processor running the emulation of the 3.5Mhz Z80 too fast!

Steve Evans

re: Legendary

Not even that... Look at a ZX81 and then look at the mobile phone in your hand!

I've been doing some work with microcontrollers recently, and even those £3 chips have 32k of EEPROM, 2K of RAM and run at 16Mhz! It does amuse me no end, but the tight assembler programming habits I picked up from years of 2Mhz 6502 coding on my BBC micro has stood me in good stead.

Steve Evans

Sounds familiar...

I was gifted an old '81 a few years ago, it had already had a "real" keyboard (kingston?) added in a bigger case, and the ram pack connected with good old fashioned solder!

My BBC I've had for almost 30 years is still with me. PSU upgraded to switch mode model from it's original linear jobby. Board upgraded from model A to B with all the trimming. Solidisk sideways RAM, CPU upgraded to 65C02, and of course the Music 500 you mention... And it all still works! How on earth that happened after the number of soldering iron adventures I had inside that case in my teenage years I do not know!

I never did manage to make head nor tail of composing with the Music 500 though!

Locked iPhones still got their ears on

Steve Evans

Indeed...

A truly locked phone would be pretty hard to return to the owner unless the owner realised the phone was lost and called it before the 24 hours of operation the average super smart phone can manage had expired.

I did find an N95 8gig a few years ago in a pub. Luckily it wasn't locked, so I called the last two people the owner had called and explained the situation. One of the people was a work mate who would be seeing the owner next morning, so I left my number so they could call me.

A few days later the phone was back with its owner, and I earnt a couple of free beers after work, which is always nice.

Nuance Flext9

Steve Evans

Re: Swype

I was just about to say the same thing. I've only recently got my 'droid, and one of the first stops was Swype... Sign up for the beta, and there you go!

Brilliant... Makes me wonder why I bought a Desire Z with a really keyboard now! lol!

Charlie Sheen explodes onto Twitter

Steve Evans

Errr...

He's also wearing his baseball cap backwards which is normally limited to looking stupid on people half his age... Well done for bridging the generation gap on that one Charlie!

Steve Jobs unveils iPad 2

Steve Evans

Re re Was the author of this piece there?

As opposed to how Americans in general pronounce Jagwaah?

Facebook to share home addresses, phone numbers

Steve Evans

That's fine by me

Home address and mobile number are two things I already don't share with facebook!

Mobile spyware tool helps paranoid spouses prove themselves right

Steve Evans

Re: depends...

Cheating when the phones are on the same account would be a bit stupid, or am I the only person on the planet who still receives an itemised call list on my bill?

I believe the standard technique is to obtain a second phone. If the spouse doesn't even know it exists then they can't install anything on it!

Antennagate Redux: Consumer Reports condemns Verizon iPhone 4

Steve Evans

re: hmmm

I don't think android strips away the ability to innovate and make a product "yours", just look at htc.

Steve Evans

really?

Can you get iphone free on £30 a month contacts now?

Top execs fly from Alibaba after supplier frauds

Steve Evans

No shock...

I regularly find things I would like turn up on Alibaba, but the reputation the Asian continent has for scams and such has always put me off...

Well that and naming your site after a guy who is associated with 40 thieves and was guilty of breaking, entering and theft.

Bahrain Grand Prix may be postponed

Steve Evans

Personally...

I think F1 would be quite entertaining if the crowd were armed with automatic weapons... It would certainly ensure the rules that Ferrari love to bend so much far more efficiently than the FIA do.

In fact if this had been introduced a few years back we would have been spared several years of watching the follow Schumacher precession which made viewers tune out faster than Bernie appearing in a mankini.

Apple iOS dominates Euro smartphone usage

Steve Evans

Re: Do iPhones really outnumber Android phones 3-1 in Europe?

Remember the stats are based on web hits, not on sales. So all the graph shows is that iOS users browsed sites running this specific counter 3 times more than Android... However, as you say, it could be a case of miss counting. iOS has been locked into the built in browser until only recently, whereas Symbian and Android users have been able to opt for other since year dot. If these are not identified as the correct OS then the entire graph and conclusions drawn from it aren't worth jack.

I for one wouldn't dream of browsing t'intarweb on the default Nokia browser. First install on Symbian for me was always Opera mobile, and the second was Opera mini!

Nokia: free phones for developers

Steve Evans

Re: Yeah, but no, but...

Indeed... The demise of Symbian is probably the end of the mobile that can last 4 days without a charge for quite a while.

Steve Evans

Wait for it...

Standby for next weeks headline from the Nokia PR machine that signups as Nokia developers have reached a record high since announcing the Microsoft deal... Whilst casually forgetting to mention the free phone deal and that 90% of the new signups are just after the freebees...

Time to dust off the ebay account... Now where do I sign up?

Orange Cash goes live, O2 Money goes to Ireland

Steve Evans

Contactly waving...

I was given (without asking) a Barclaycard contact-less visa and Oyster card in 2009... I've yet to find anywhere to wave it... Maybe I've missed opportunities, I don't know, but if the shop staff don't let me know they have wave-able technology, how am I supposed to know?

I guess I should look out for anywhere that has water slides through it as a hint.

Adobe Flash: 20m phones flip Steve Jobs the bird

Steve Evans
Pint

Re: Grow up Steve

I apologise if you miss understood the target of my comments, but I did clarify it in my first reply... Now please lay off the coffee and stop being such a victim.

Try a beer.

Steve Evans

Re: Lazy

Did I say *all*? No I did not. I singled out the lazy ones who's entire HTML consists of the flash embedding wrapper which they automatically generate.

You decided to walk into the firing line of my comment all by yourself.

NO-SH*T CURE FOR BALDNESS discovered by accident

Steve Evans

Or maybe...

"Imagine the boffins' surprise, then, when it turned out that all their bald mice had grown hair again and could not be told apart from the others any longer."

Sounds like somebody's mother accidentally killed them whilst the boffins were away, and replaced them... "They'll never notice" she was heard to say...

Microsoft loses global ad head to Facebook

Steve Evans
Badgers

Give it a month...

..and Microsoft/Facebook will announce an alliance to run the whole thing on WM7 and power all the searches with Bing!

Ambulance dispatch system hit by virus: reports

Steve Evans

Not quite that simple...

Some of the viruses are so determined to spread on a LAN that they can saturate switches and effectively cut-off other systems which aren't even infected... Added to this the brute force log in attempts that they often try and you can quickly find that user accounts are disabled purely because a completely separate infected machine has attempted to brute force the log in and the domain controller has had a pink fit about it and locked down!

Microsoft polishes Windows Phone 7

Steve Evans
Coat

Wow!

Playing audio in the background? How very Symbian 2004...

Mines the one with the new Android phone in the pocket.

I’m not a Trojan horse: Nokia’s Elop hits back at neigh sayers

Steve Evans

Re: will limit WP7 to Nokia

Exactly my thoughts... Hopefully HTC will say "thank you MS" for actually making them a mainstream manufacturer and then go and spend all their time working on more new Android devices :-)