Posts by DerekCurrie 656 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2012
After decades of waiting for high quality VR, how about we have some actual high quality VR?
Seeing triangles, squares and circles with textures plastered on top does NOT qualify as high quality VR. I'm yawning. That's what I was looking at back in 1996, twenty years ago. -zzzzz
We know full well where this unrelated study is going: It's going to inexplicably be used as an excuse to ignore the demands of the vast majority of world citizens, to cowtow to our corporate overlords and kill off the labeling of GMOs in our food.
Big Obvious News:
Labeling GMOs infers nothing about their health effects, fitness for consumption, impact on world environments, exploitation of farmers or loss of native/heirloom varieties. All it does is let people know that GMOs are in the food. That's all. It's the corporations that are reading more into GMO labeling than is actually there.
IOW: Label GMOs.
That's what We The People worldwide want.
Stop the political/corporatocracy baloney and just do as we demand.
We know full well where this unrelated study is going: It's going to inexplicably be used as an excuse to ignore the demands of the vast majority of world citizens, to cowtow to our corporate overlords and kill off the labeling of GMOs in our food.
Big Obvious News: Labeling GMOs infers NOTHING about their health effects, fitness for consumption, impact on world environments, exploitation of farmers or loss of native/heirloom varieties. All it does is let people know that GMOs are in the food. That's all. It's the corporations that are reading more into GMO labeling than is actually there.
IOW: Label GMOs. That's what We The People worldwide want. Stop the political/corporatocracy baloney and just do as we demand.
"Quality at Apple went to shit around the time Jobs died."
No actually. Apple has had occasional problems on a variety of levels throughout their existence, before, during and after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO. This is just more of the occasional same. I hate it when Apple pull these blunders. But then again, we're still in The Dark Age of Computing and I learned long, long ago to expect such things from the computer community in general. Right now, Android is the horror OS of the world thanks to FragmAndroid. But Apple has never been immune, nor any other computer hardware or software company. It's status quo fumbling and bumbling. I heartily recommend giving Apple a swift kick over this one as it does tend to wake them up and get them back on track, the same as any other company.
Get help with iOS update and restore errors
Learn how to solve specific iOS update and restore errors.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204770
"If you see one of the errors below, you might have a hardware issue:
...56...
Here's what to check:
1. Make sure that you have the latest version of iTunes.
2. Check for issues with third-party security software.
3. Make sure that your USB cable, computer, and network are reliable. Then try twice more to restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.
4. If you still see the error message, you can check for outdated or modified software or contact Apple support.
Verizon is a clunky company with a bad attitude toward everyone. It's a grumpy company. So kill it off and let's get in a new company to take over the territories and treat everyone with respect, for a change. Die Verizon Die. Next!
REAL 4G is known as LTE Advanced.
What marketing morons call '4G' these days is nothing more than fast 3G. All this chat-chat-chatter about '5G' is merely more marketing hype. That particular technology is YEARS away. Meanwhile, REAL 4G is here; It's been ready to go for YEARS; The lazy ass mobile phone companies haven't bothered to deploy it for gawd knows what reasons. But here they are hyping 5G. Ludicrous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_devices_with_LTE_Advanced
#MyStupidGovernment at work, once again:
"When there's a court order to render technical assistance to law enforcement or provide decrypted information, that court order is carried out. No individual or company is above the law."
Neither are my stupid US senators.
1) This idiocy of a bill blatantly attempts to destroy the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. If any US citizen chooses to encrypt their PRIVATE information, they have the right to AND to never divulge information they know that would allow access.
2) This idiocy of a bill is ignorant of the fact that unbreakable end-to-end encryption is free, available everywhere, is plentiful and is not going away ever.
3) Every US company has the right to provide Fifth Amendment supporting encryption in their products AND the right to refuse to break that encryption. That's going to stand up in court no matter how hard the totalitarian maniacals try to fight it.
4) As Apple has already pointed out: "Contrary to the government’s contention that CALEA is inapplicable to this dispute, Congress declared via CALEA that the government cannot dictate to providers of electronic communications services or manufacturers of telecommunications equipment any specific equipment design or software configuration."
Summary: #MyStupidGovernment is hopelessly drowning in this issue. All they are accomplishing is to drive a deeper and wider wedge between the rights and wishes of We The People, with OUR US Constitution in hand, and our technologically inept and politically corrupt government. No, totalitarianism is never the way. Totalitarianism is government FAILure, which is what this ridiculous bill seeks. It demands that the terrorists win.
Why does Google, who insist upon so much attention to security internally and in OTHER people's software (Project Zero), allow their Android OS to be the single most dangerous mobile OS available? Why can't they REALLY vet their Google Play Store? Why can't they insist upon ASAP updating across the entire Android spectrum of devices, ending the nightmare that is fragmandroid?
Google: Hypocrites
Google: Cognitive Dissonance
The usual concept: We humans don't understand how our own brains work or what 'intelligence' actually is. So here we are pretending to invent artificial intelligence. And we keep on proving that what we're really good at is creating artificial insanity.
And of course, the apex of artificial insanity programming is that chasm of computing quality, Microsoft. No surprise. (0_o)
We apparently are so desperate to create something, as if we were god-like, we can call 'intelligent' that we have been foisting clearly un-intelligent technology as brilliant breakthroughs in 'Artificial Intelligence'.
Instead, we're making baby steps, very slowly.
What should really concern us is the abuse of this technology as it slowly progresses. Already, the Department of Defense in the USA is planning to use robots in the battlefield. This would be an abomination, an abuse of the creativity of mankind for the purpose of destroying mankind via our usual favorite method called 'war'. Sending machines and computer code to perform the work of soldiers is what cowards do when they are unwilling to face those with whom they have a disagreement. Robots are tools. Artificial intelligence is a tool. Both should never be anything other than tools for mankind. When they are abused for destructive purposes, the humans behind the decisions to abuse these technologies should be considered criminals. Technology and other human creativity is for the benefit of mankind, never for its destruction, especially in war.
"While Apple has been listing the briefs filed with the court on its website, we note one missing: the 18-page argument in favor of the FBI's position..."
Of course Apple doesn't list this brief. What Apple lists is, to quote:
"Amicus Briefs in Support of Apple".
The critical phrase is 'in Support of'.
Pointing out quotes from New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance is incoherent, seeing as he just lost a court case demanding Apple help crack an iPhone in a drug crime case. Or didn't you know that?
You state: "The crux of the law enforcement argument is pretty simple: in order to do their jobs they need to be able to get at relevant evidence." NO. In order to do their jobs they have to protect and defend both the law, including the US Constitution, and the citizens of the USA. That includes defending The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. Breaking the US Constitution is NOT their job. Subverting US citizen's rights to privacy, including as much and any encryption they choose to use, is NOT their job.
Immediately, this article comes off as a hit piece with no adherence to facts, little understanding of the subject and meagre background in US law, including the US Constitution. Did you expect this issue to be a mud puddle you could splash about in? You've drowned yourself.
Why did you bother to write this cognitive dissonance diatribe and why did The Register publish it? Try again, without attempting to enable, excuse or support totalitarianism.
Speaking of which, don't UK citizens have their own more offensive problems with governmental totalitarianism to route out and end?
Reminder: When we nations of the world subvert citizen's rights in response to terrorism, the terrorists WIN.
If anyone thinks TTP and TTIP have anything to do with benefitting We The People, citizens of the world, you're wrong. It's all about the corporations, their disrespect for their customers, their demands for treating us all as Default Criminals and therefore punishing us for imaginary crimes. We are not to be trusted. We are to be parasitized.
Oh and to hell with our elected governments. If such lame institutions do ANYTHING that compromises the profits of our corporate overlords, they get SUED in a kangaroo court of corporate lawyers as judges.
IOW: This is where the insanity began, sad people of the future.
"Last month Apple reported results that were - for the tech juggernaut - slightly lacklustre, precipitating a share slide that made it the former most valuable company in the world."
No: The Apple results were not remotely 'lacklustre'.
No: Apple is not the 'former' most valuable company, as of February 3 anyway. GOOG shares fell and knocked it off the perceptual pedestal.
Yes: Amidst the hysterical hysteria of WallNut Street, Apple is wisely projecting a rare decline in year over year earnings NEXT quarter. Therefore, let's blame the state of WallNut Street's paranoia and the state of the world economy at Apple's door, sell all our AAPL and buy more guns. (o_0)
OR we could figure out that there's something a bit loony about Sandeep Mathrani, CEO at General Growth Properties.
My US government does NOT understand the technology. My US government does NOT bother with the US Constitution if it's inconvenient. (See the Fourth Amendment and note the flood of violations from my US government brought to public attention).
My US government instead is hell bound determined to apply totalitarian tactics to US citizen communications, with obviously detrimental results. The terrorists <3 LOVE <3 it when their victims go berzerk and wreck their countries with totalitarianism. Goal achieved. √
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Thank you Ben.
Thanks to the inability of #MyStupidGovernment to act in a reliably coherent manner, the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a catastrophic mess of poor funding, ridiculously poor research of prior art and overall responsibility for its blundering. The result is lots of wasted money being fed into the pockets of opportunistic patent trolls, receivers of bogus patent approval and of course lawyers. :-P
Early in December, while using a VNP client, I attempted to buy some software over the Internet while using an exit node located in another country. The location of the exit node lead my attempt to use PayPal into a black hole. It refused to work properly. I ended up buying the software via a credit card instead.
Over the course to two attempts to sort out the lock out from my account via phone reps at PayPal, I ran into incessantly hellish interrogation, including not just Brian's questions, but obscure questions with answers 'collected from the Internet' that I literally could not answer, they were so outrageously obscure. My second attempt to battle through their phone system lead me up FIVE (5) levels of tech support until I finally got a very kind and coherent fellow who, at long bloody last, knew exactly what hat happened, why it had happened, and was able to repair the situation.
IOW: My impression was that using even straight, honest, 'yes this is damned well ME!' attempts to access my own PayPal account was utterly futile until I was furious enough to want to yell into the phone for supervisor after supervisor after supervisor. If these hackers got away with merely answering four digits of both a social security number and credit card (which I too was asked at level 1 of PayPal support), some phone representative NOT following the PayPal protocols I encountered EARLIER in December was being incredibly lazy on the phone.
Conclusion: Bravo to PayPal for having beyond-sane stringent rules for resetting accounts. BOO to PayPal for obviously NOT making this the case across their entire phone rep bank. A phone rep at PayPal is, from my evidence, to blame for falling for the social engineering while ignoring PayPal protocols.
:-Derek Currie
The now famous core problem with the IoT is its horrifyingly poor security. Often IoT security isn't even an afterthought. It's never thought of at all! That's why vast botnets of IoT devices already exist, ruining the reputation of the entire market.
The only winners in the IoT competition will be those that LOCK DOWN their devices to all security attacks and exploits. I don't care what company is foisting the stuff. PROVE YOUR SECURITY! Or get the hell out of the IoT market immediately and forever.
There is no longer any Grand Old Party. Once the scum from the Neo-Conservative hell tank, 'Project For The New American Century', took over the US White House, IOW executive branch, the GOP was dead and gone. Anyone who still clung to the old ways of reason, sanity and fairness were cast aside as RINOs, or Republican In Name Only, a term that is a crowning achievement of Newspeak propagandist lunacy.
This new, fake 'GOP' is run by Israeli, corporate and richest 1% interests. That's all they are and that's all they are good for. Welcome to their Neo-Feudal state of madness.
They want to kill opportunities to bypass the parasitic ISP corporations? Of course they do. That's want they're paid for.
Comparing this history of 'smart'phones, it is blatantly clear where Samsung consistently gets its ideas, beyond the bland insecurity they inherit from Android. Samsung rips off Apple. Their crimes are constant, consistent, obvious, and continue to this day (IMHO of course).
My recommendation: Boycott all things Samsung. That's one way to MAKE Samsung pay what they REALLY owe to Apple and the technology community they've corrupted (IMHO of course).
There is nothing 'darling' about Backblaze from my lousy experience. I'd uploaded all my computer data, encrypted with a key I held close in a separate encrypted disk image, to Backblaze in hopes that they were the great Trust-No-One backup cloud service I was looking for. Then one day, I needed to restore one file from my backup. It had gone corrupt on my system and a good copy was, supposedly, up on Backblaze.
Except my encryption key, the one and only, DIDN'T WORK when I wanted to download and decrypt the file. Backblaze offered no explanation, no apology. Instead they played the old crap company game of Blame The Victim. That was followed by an offer to refund money for the remaining time on my account under the condition that I GET LOST.
Don't trust Backblaze folks. And no, I'm not going to join into a flame war about them. This is my experience and I'm sticking to it. My duty now has ended.
So: To the 'safety' maniacal, go live in one of the several totalitarian states if you want 'safety' over privacy. You're treasonously attempting to subvert the US Constitution. So leave the USA and find a Big Brother state better suited to your control issues and sensitivity to FUD mongering.
Ben said it best:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Some fellow thinkers:
"We The People - are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." - Abraham Lincoln
"There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation (United States of America) if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand it's meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit, to the extent that it's in my control."
- Quote from John F Kennedy on April 27, 1961
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
Odd as it is for Apple to say it is "the first major computer company to make Open Source development a key part of its ongoing software strategy"...
Apple has been involved with Open Source projects for decades. Recall the MKLinux project back in the mid-1990s. When Apple bought NeXT, it brought in an operating system fundamentally based on open source software, starting with the Mach kernel. By the time of the release of Mac OS X, Apple was involved with 300+ open source projects and has expanded from there.
#MyStupidGovernment (0_o)
Catch Up! This Is The Future!
Rather than worry about being able to hack into US citizen data, why can't you surveillance zealots figure out that being hackable means You WILL Be Hacked By The Bad Guys! You ARE being hacked by the bad guys. Over and over and over and over again.
What an incoherent mess of cognitive dissonance is my US government.
Its IQ: Diminishing daily.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is here to stay.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
We The People no longer trust the surveillance zealots of #MyStupidGovernment. If they hadn't been so foolish as to destroy our Fourth Amendment rights for years-on-end, maybe we'd have sympathy. But trust is dead and gone. Solid, real, keep your damned government nose out of my private business ENCRYPTION is here to stay forever. Thank yourselves for that fact.
The '1984' scenario is the enemy. Enact it and the terrorists WIN.
"On Monday, Cook pointed out that data breaches were "becoming more frequent", while failing to note that Apple's own iCloud servers had been ransacked late last year."
That is a deliberate, willfully IGNORANT statement. A new trait of The Register?
For those who care, what got 'ransacked' were Apple users who fell for phishing scams and ordinary dictionary attacks on their individual accounts. That problem has been ongoing for years and is of course not confined to Apple, or Facebook, or Twitter, or the banks, etc.
Incredible FAIL Kelly Fiveash. Let's stick to the facts about computer security, not the myths, not the ignorant memes, not stupid statements spread by stupid 'analysts'.
Thank you for at least pointing out, on page 2, one of the core abominations of this 'treaty':
"The big topic that does seem to be legitimate is that the TPP will allow corporations to sue governments through so-called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), but that individuals will not be given an equivalent right to sue corporations."
This is plain and simply corporatocracy. It overrides US law and the law of any other signatory country. It hands over rights that only belong in the hands of voting citizens into the hands of corporations. It is obviously a play by corporations to wreck any aspect of real democracy that does not suit its needs. That specifically makes this 'treaty' an abomination.
Enough said.
Kill TPP.
ASAP patching is the only reasonable response to an onslaught of security flaws, exploits and malware. Once a month is obviously convenient for certain situations, but it's not realistic regarding actual security of anything.
Specific to Android devices, the 'FragmAndroid' fragmentation nightmare has got to go. It must end. ALL Android devices must be able to be updated immediately at the same time across all vendors. Otherwise, Android is going to do nothing but grow its already notorious reputation for security nightmares. In this day and age, the results of fragmented Android installations is entirely unacceptable. I can't imagine why anyone with techno-savvy puts up with it.
Did those two renegade software developers at VW write the code for ALL THE OTHER diesel car companies that equally abused their customers? I don't think so. I think this situation doesn't just go to the very top of VW. I think this trick was shared among the top executives of ALL of these companies and became a matter of competition. If your scum company didn't scam the customer, they were going to lose out.
Result: A corruption eddy. You're ALL to blame.
There's a faerie tale Target told the victims of their massive customer account security breach. They said the cause of it all was that mag strip on credit and debit cards.
No it wasn't.
100% of the problem was the Windows XP Embedded mag strip readers that stupidly stored all the scanned mag strip data in-the-clear (no encryption) in RAM, ripe for the picking by malware infecting those readers. Once ALL the crap mag strip readers are dumpstered, the problem will be gone.
The Target faerie tale continues that, if only the USA would embrace NFC (RFID) credit and debit cards, security would be attained and happiness would reign throughout the kingdom.
Wrong.
There are first generation NFC cards that suck, from which any old passing granny can steal its customer data by way of a portable scanner. Oops, dear old granny bumped into you, her scanner read your card, you're screwed. That's what Target wanted everyone to use instead of mag strips. Awful idea.
Now there are second generation NFC cards the suck far less. They only output a one-time-use number for a purchase, meaning that NONE of the user data can be stolen. These are, at long bloody last, effectively 'safe' cards to use for shopping.
Taking the one-time-use number farther are services such as Apple Pay, where the user has to physically approve any NFC data dump. There is no longer the ability of naughty granny to grab even that that number. That is the best option. That's happiness.
What's worse?
A) 'Terrorists' being able to break into every computer in the USA because of back doors?
B) US citizens exercising their constitutional, Fourth Amendment rights to total privacy?
We've already been watching the result of crap software and operating systems allowing China, ad nauseam, to steal millions of government employee's identities, including fingerprints. We want these computer illiterates to have a back door into ANYTHING that can invade our privacy. NO!
Deal with the fact of the US Constitution, dear government of mine. Stop destroying our trust in you!!!
"The more rigorous testing regime required before an iOS app can be published has always been considered to be the reason for this difference, but in this case it seems to have fallen short."
Every Apple developer knows the two, and only two, sources for downloading Xcode. Any developer with any sense of software security knows that WAREZ versions of anything are entirely capable of being malware vectors. That is nothing new. Back in early 2009, WAREZ versions of Mac apps were implicated in a Mac botnet of hundreds of thousands (as many as 600,000) Macs.
The way it should have gone down was:
- Developers in China inform Apple that The Great Firewall Of China screws them over every day with crap for bandwidth.
- Apple should have responded by providing software servers inside China, subverting any motivation to download WAREZ versions of Xcode.
- The End.
That didn't happen then; At least it's happened now. Apple meanwhile has to thrash through the iOS store to find every app infected with XcodeGhost malware. It's going to take awhile. This new number of 4,000 apps is mind-boggling.
Should this incident be compared to the rat's nest of security holes and malware that are the default of all things Android? OF COURSE NOT. Try not to look so desperate to bash Apple, please.
Stick with iOS BYODs. That's the simple message from my POV.
Reservations:
1) iOS devices have to be verified as non-jailbroken at the place of business.
2) Apple has STILL not adequately addressed Wirelurker exploits whereby stolen enterprise developer security certificates can be used to sign malware that fakes itself as another existing application, overwriting the real applications and PWNing the device when the fake app is run by the user. Just this week a new Wirelurker related exploit was made public. It abuses an AirDrop setting to send malware pretending to be a 'photo' to a victim. That malware is automatically installed upon reboot of the device. When the resulting faked app is run, the device is PWNed. Fix this Apple!
[Note: The AirDrop exploit has been 'mitigated' but not yet patched in iOS 9.]
['PWN' = 'Own' = The device is now under the control of a malware rat.]
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
