Posts by Anon5000

Lies, damn lies and statistics

The Pirate Bay is no longer blocked in Holland after a court found that blocking the site made no difference to piracy levels. If you pull the IFPI stats apart and find how they came about their results there will likely be many holes to their logic. The IFPI has to justify it's existence and keep donations coming in just like many of the other media lobby organisations.

Apply to the statistics the increasing availability of cheap legal alternatives, increased newsgroup signups, increased use of VPN's as well as flash based streaming sites and the numbers will likely show that the IFPI has their figures wrong as well as the amount they attribute to website blocking.

Although I have subscriptions for TV and Amazon Prime streaming, I pirate the same content I legally have access too. Artificial blocking of the services on rooted android devices as well as the lack of Linux support due to Silverlight DRM means it's too fiddly to use. Pipelight is an option but Sky only works with one version while Amazon another. Why go through all the hassle every time when you can click a few options in Sickbeard/Couchpotato and then fire up XBMC to watch the content in any room at a better quality than the alternatives.

Services

Any server than runs services such as web servers is opening up more attack vectors. This is a software issue rather than operating system.

Using Linux as your home desktop is still much more secure by design. Antivirus for home users will become useful at some point in the future no doubt but for now only servers really need it still.

Got myself a pair of bluetooth stereo headphones (Nokia BH-505) to avoid all the wires while listening to music and found them to be superb. Tend to use them whenever I go somewhere by foot or public transport and the benefit of having music in both ears is you shut out the traffic noise as well as all the crazies. The flip side of the coin is everyone thinks i'm the crazy one with a weird contraption stuck to my head.

Only gets used for calls if someone calls me while it is in use. Strange having the callers voice 'inside your head' but it's clear. The issue is others hearing you if it's windy.

Not getting tangled in wires and being able to poke your ear to pause music (or answer a call) as well as a little ear scratch to turn volume up and down go a long way. Not having fiddly cables in the way to pull out by accident, thus thrusting potentially embarrassing music out the phone speakers so the rest of the train can hear, is a clear bonus.

Using the phone for music you are not just limited to your own mp3's, you can use various streaming services such as Googles instant radio and such like. An advantage for those who like some variety from their usual mp3 collection.

As you can tell, I would highly recommend the concept of stereo bluetooth headsets.

Personally I think it should stay unregulated, even if it means uncertainty to the value of a bitcoin. Those choosing to use or invest in it should be aware of the volatile nature of the currency by now and understand the risks involved, it's their own choice if they want to gamble with their money. Having something that the government can't touch or control has a certain appeal to it in this day and age.

It will become regulated at some point, probably because the bankers are getting involved with it now and will try to use it to avoid paying large amount of tax.

Stuck Between two worlds

Apparently in the US he wouldn't be forced to give the encryption keys due to laws on self incrimination. He is not accused of committing any crime in the UK yet could spend 2 years in jail for not handing over the keys anyway. If the UK get the keys for the US, then they can ignore the self incrimination rule.

With GCHQ and the NSA hacking non-terrorist entities and peeking in to the webcams of millions of people, how can they even think about bringing charges and extraditing someone for releasing a few entries from a database?

Climate Change

Not so long scientists said things will get cooler and there will be a global chiiling that could head us towards an ice age. Then came the lot that sais the polar ice caps are melting and we will have a global warming.

Now it is obvious none of them have a clue, they just use the words Climate Change as a coverall for any weather that goes in either direction.

The worlds weather was changing well before we were here and if we are affecting It in any way, it's marginal

Streaming

The reason they don't make more money from streaming is....the BPI.

UK listeners still can not get access to Pandora streaming radio simply because the BPI have demanded in excess of what is asked for elsewhere. The BPI and it's licencing are a major problem and they need a good slapping.

#BadBios

Airgapped devices communicating is an extension of this technology which government spies appear to be using already. Being an IsraelI startup by ex-military personnel, one has to wonder if logins is the only feature they have been working on.

Really

Yahoo is in no position to take the piss out of Gmail considering the state their own service has been in for some time now.

The sooner encrypted email services become common with encrypted connections between servers, the quicker people will move away from Yahoo and Gmail, who won't want to do it due to their business model. A win for all!

Maxthon

Maxthon is a great browser for android. Fast and lightweight compared to the usual suspects.

They also have a Mac, iPhone and windows version. The Windows version is based on Chromium and worked pretty well if you didn't run too many plugins. It has a sync option which sends bookmarks and pages between all your devices that run Maxthon and also has a download to cloud option.

Had the option to use these for some time yet never do. It's a privacy vs convenience thing, prefer not sending all my favourite sites and data to a company to use in any way they want.

The 1337day site has an exploit for sale which claims to be for ProFTPD 3.3.3g and quotes the BBC FTP site. Some of their exploits for sale have been a bit dubious in the past so rather than it being a new ProFTPD vulnerability it may just be instructions on a misconfiguration of that particular server.

Always have loved the simplicity and stability of FTP personally and added secure SSL functionality has been available for years on many clients/servers. FxP'ing between servers still happens!

Brilliant!

All we need is for younger gay and transgender individuals to come along and say the blocks are against their human rights as it stops them identifying and communicating with like minded individuals if they are not the internet account holder.

Oh dear...

Sky are now saying it could take ANOTHER 48 hours to fix.

CorporationPolice

The City of London Police appear to be writing nasty letters to sites as well as domain registry providers even though they are out of their jurisdiction. No legal basis to shut the sites down so attempting to scare them in to submission on behalf of the media monsters.

Obviously the sites are dodgy but I doubt they are hurting UK IP holders one bit, yet alone needing a department in the City of London Police to harass them and their business partners with non-legal letters.