Last time I used Verizon's set to boxes they where far from perfect. In fact, I found them to be incredibly slow, and unstable. My Cable Card tuner has not been unstable in the least. I cannot remember the last time I had to power cycle the thing and I don't have serious problems with video quality even though I'm usually streaming HD. My biggest problem is the network stability, but that's because I'm a cheap scape who still runs 100 Base-T switches because I've not yet ready to part with the cash for gigabit switches (Yea, I know, they are cheap..). 100 Base-T is marginal when you are streaming multiple HD streams, so sometimes the network gets congested.
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent..
In my case, this is not true. Your basic set top box on Verizon FIOS costs $12/month and the DVR box $25/month (as I remember). My cable card costs $5/month and I only need one card to watch/record on up to 3 programs at a time on as many screens as I can attach to my network.
Yea, I really hated the last time I went out to completive shop my two cable providers. Hidden fees and costs abound and many are not as obvious as the set top box stuff.
I found out the hard way that if you don't buy the bundle they pump up the price of the internet connection, sometimes by over 20%. I also discovered that the ad prices are ALWAYS lower than what you can actually purchase it for. In my case, I ditched the set top box and went for a Network Cable Card tuner solution, but they would have hit me up for $25/set for 2 TV's had I not rolled my own with a cable card for $5/month. All in all, the ad price came in at about $95/month for cable and internet bundled. This ACTUALLY costs, tax, title, license and local sports fee later over $125/month. This would have been over $150/month had I used their set-top DVR box. The kicker here is I was paying about $85 for internet only (tax, title and license) which they advertise at about $75. Oh, and don't get me started on this "That price is for new customers only" soap box.
ALWAYS ask that they give you the TOTAL monthly price, taxes, fees and equipment included. REFUSE to believe the ads you see....
Didn't the FCC solve this with the Cable Card thing? I have a media server that emulates a cable box for my whole house. Works great.
The only real problem here is that with the demise of Windows Media Center and Windows 7 there isn't a viable fully vetted option for me to turn to that will allow me to watch and DVR protected content. Yes, Silicon Dust is working on a version, but it's not yet certified (as far as I know) for protected content.
The FCC already solved this issue. Why are they trying to solve it again?
Exactly.. Things like this are bouncing around in the back of hundreds of Pickups rumbling around west Texas right now. Yes, they are dangerous if you take them out of their containers, mostly to the idiots who do stupid things like breaking out the hacksaws, hammers and blow torches on things marked a radiation hazard. Making a "dirty bomb" out of 10oz of this stuff is more likely to harm the bomb maker than anybody else.
Yea, dang that Sadam lied to us before the war started about having those things and being willing to use them, never mind that he had used them before on his own people... BTW, he is dead now... Keep grinding that political ax, it's been more than a decade now.
You're right. It'd be much better for the American people to still be in the dark about the NSA's activities
I don't have any special privileges and I KNEW what the government was doing before Snowden did his thing. I may not have know the extent of what they where doing, but I sure knew the extent of what they COULD have been doing. I interviewed once with a company (now out of business) that provided the network monitoring tools that in hindsight where used for this program and having a telecommunications background may have helped me understand the ways the government could do stuff like this, but I'm surely not alone in my understanding of SS7 signaling and related technologies. It was obvious to me and I'm sure others what they where doing because they where not really trying to hide it.
All Snowden really accomplished (beyond his banishment) is drawing attention to the situation in a way that appealed to the press, helped along by the cloak and dagger motif and pictures of his "girlfriend" left behind. Well, power to him, but he was stupid. Like it or not, nothing has really changed, and where the "program" has been publicly shutdown now (being largely useless given it was common public knowledge) you can be sure it's been replaced with programs that have similar capabilities but less constitutional impact.
Where electrical systems have vastly improved the reliability of the mechanical parts of an engine are still much better.
The majority of issues I've had with my vehicles over the last decade have been electrical and NOT mechanical, especially in the drive train (engine, transmission etc.) Yes, they are better these days, but the majority of repair issues are still electrical/electronic in nature.
P.S. Isn't it great how well the FCC listened to all those comments that they solicited? Don;t you feel like your voice matters? That you're part of the system? That your government works for you and takes your concerns into consideration?
The FCC, or more specifically the commissioners are political hacks, ALL of them. It's been a long time since the FCC was actually controlled by people who actually understood the technical and business issues upon which they decide. They are driven by lobbyists, political donations and the people who nominated them and not what's good for the people. It's sad, but that's what your government has become, The FCC is just one of the more obvious examples of it.
Exactly.. That Netgear WRT1900ACs is a sweet system. Nice CPU, two radios, Managed switch, Lots of flash, enough RAM, USB2 & 3 and even an eSATA connection. PLUS the manufacturer is running OpenWRT as their default firmware and are supporting the development by releasing the source code. Now with the "s" variant out, the plain WRT1900AC is available for just over $100. Hard to beat that. Heck, just using it for the managed switch part is almost cost effective for a 5 port switch, but add the routing, file sharing, USB ports and it's a fine multipurpose tool.
So what's to stop you from changing the boot loader? Most of these devices use U-Boot or some variant so if the manufacturers provide their U-Boot alterations, it's not like one cannot remove the "secure boot" option from the hardware. Yes, it may require JTAG and eliminate a lot of folks from just flashing third party stuff at the drop of a hat, but it's not like guys like me (who have the JTAG equipment) cannot do what we want.
You get what you pay for. If you go for the cheap solution, you get the cheap solution, always. Or to quote the article....
"Consumers should be aware that when buying especially lower-end devices made in China, there is a significant risk of the devices having serious flaws that won't ever be addressed," said Carsten Eiram, chief research officer at RBS
Besides, if you REALLY are security minded, who puts this kind of device just out in the wild for all to see and use? At least put it behind a VPN, where you can hope to control access to it. If nothing else, use a protected proxy connection.... Don't just put the HTTP/HTTPS port from some cheap device you own on the internet unless you really don't care who access it..
I hope life in Russia with the ever present possibility of deportation is worth it. Ok, so he can walk around at will, but he is not free to come home, is stuck in a declining country with an economy to match and must trot out before the cameras every time Putin decides he needs a pawn to poke the USA in the eye over some cyber security related issue. Not to mention that Russia can deport him at the drop of a hat, anytime it suits them. If he even tries to step outside of Russian territory he's risking capture, imprisonment, trial and the death penalty for what he did. Hope he likes it there, because as soon as he becomes irrelevant (and that's fast approaching) Putin will cut him loose and the best he can hope for is to be allowed to stay. If they depart him, it's game over.
For the love of.... Corporations had RIGHTS long before the Citizen's United case. All that Citizen's United did was recognize that Corporations had First Amendment rights (free speech rights) and could participate in political campaigns.
I'm not going to adjudicate the SCOTUS decision here, but you guys who don't like the Citizen's United ruling do need to back down on the rhetoric a bit. This ruling does NOT grant a pile of new rights to corporations, it only established that they couldn't be barred from participating the political process. This wasn't a new right nor did it materially change the legal standing of corporations. All it really did was strike down some laws which where intended to keep corporate money from being used for political purposes.
I am very surprised that Apple have taken a stance like this.
I expected all companies to simply "bow down" to a governments requests and threats and expected all my phone data to visible by almost any government; regardless of how much I personally oppose it.
Im happy I have an iphone now.
Don't jump to conclusions too fast here. Ticking off a judge by refusing to honor his order is a really bad idea and refusing to assist the FBI in the investigation of a crime might not be a good thing in the future.
Unless Apple can prove that it really IS impossible to do what the Judge ordered, there will likely be sanctions if they continue to refuse. Sanctions can be fines, seizure of information and jail time for those responsible for saying "no" all of which can significantly harm Apple, who may end up doing what they have been ordered anyway.
I believe that this is possible. Further, before you mount the die, during the automated testing phase you could easily allow the test unit to make connections to the die in order to allow programming of the nonvolatile areas, then "blow the fuses" by application of specific voltages/currents so the device cannot be modified using the same process ever again. If you use a random enough data source for setting the key, it will be logically impossible to do anything but brute force the key.
Of course, it is all academic. If you have access to the physical device, it should be possible, though likely very difficult, to determine what you need to know to access the data on the phone, even without the pin. At the very least, one should be able to attach to the device, dump the encrypted content, duplicate it onto a emulated device and brute force the pin without having to worry about busting the original phone. Apple could do this if they wanted but it's going to take internal knowledge of the device's design and the software that runs it. I don't see this being dangerous to privacy as it's really just an attack that is going to require extended physical access to the phone by an army of people who are equipped with the necessary hardware, software and tools along with the necessary technical data. Surely Apple can do this for ONE phone.
My guess here is that if the FBI really wants to do this, they can easily force Apple to release the necessary technical data with appropriate NDA's and hire it done. My guess is they don't want it that badly but they will do what they can to hold Apple's feet to the fire by asking the judge for sanctions given his orders are not being followed. Apple may eventually find themselves in some seriously uncomfortable situations if they truly mean to press this.
How true.. If I worked for a drive manufacturer that builds spinning HDAs, I'd be looking for another job, FAST. Makes me happy that I didn't take that job at Maxstore a decade or so ago. Even if I survived the mergers and buyouts since then, I'd be in a world of hurt now.
Actually, I don't believe the volume license terms gives you the right to just upgrade all your windows 7 boxes to 10 like the full up individual licenses we have on hardware for home and small business use. The DOD will be paying for this mainly because they likely use volume licenses to start with and pay yearly for the privilege. There may not be much change in their license costs though, as Microsoft is clearly advantaged when they can more easily drop support for the older stuff and cay drop the teams of developers required. I'm sure Microsoft made the DOD an offer they couldn't refuse price wise...
Unlikely if they host legacy applications which will cost money to port forward to 10.
I'm aware of a lot of legacy applications which continue to run on OS choices as old as Windows 98 and likely will for as long as somebody can find hardware that Windows 98 can run on. Sometimes it's just too expensive to port and validate legacy applications and you take the security risks of running unsupported operating systems.
In the case of the Navy, they are still depending on Nuclear Missile systems designed in the 60's and built in the 70's for our nation's defense. One could imagine the whole system hasn't been substantially changed in 40+ years. Why are we surprised that they have legacy applications running on XP? I'm guessing there is stuff out there which is far older upon which our nation's defense rests.
Yea, so? They invented the Jerry Can to fix that and allow you to strap extra fuel to the running boards. That was easy... The electric car's "Range Anxiety" problem isn't going away even if you had quick chargers every 100 miles. Even an 80% charge takes 45 min for modern batteries, that's a long time to get you another 150 miles down the road. Strapping extra batteries on the running boards just isn't an option here and the charge time is largely a physical limitation of the battery and not easily overcome. Like I said before, we will see incremental improvements, but there will be no revolutionary changes in electric cars.
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Last time I used Verizon's set to boxes they where far from perfect. In fact, I found them to be incredibly slow, and unstable. My Cable Card tuner has not been unstable in the least. I cannot remember the last time I had to power cycle the thing and I don't have serious problems with video quality even though I'm usually streaming HD. My biggest problem is the network stability, but that's because I'm a cheap scape who still runs 100 Base-T switches because I've not yet ready to part with the cash for gigabit switches (Yea, I know, they are cheap..). 100 Base-T is marginal when you are streaming multiple HD streams, so sometimes the network gets congested.
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent. .
In my case, this is not true. Your basic set top box on Verizon FIOS costs $12/month and the DVR box $25/month (as I remember). My cable card costs $5/month and I only need one card to watch/record on up to 3 programs at a time on as many screens as I can attach to my network.
Yea, I really hated the last time I went out to completive shop my two cable providers. Hidden fees and costs abound and many are not as obvious as the set top box stuff.
I found out the hard way that if you don't buy the bundle they pump up the price of the internet connection, sometimes by over 20%. I also discovered that the ad prices are ALWAYS lower than what you can actually purchase it for. In my case, I ditched the set top box and went for a Network Cable Card tuner solution, but they would have hit me up for $25/set for 2 TV's had I not rolled my own with a cable card for $5/month. All in all, the ad price came in at about $95/month for cable and internet bundled. This ACTUALLY costs, tax, title, license and local sports fee later over $125/month. This would have been over $150/month had I used their set-top DVR box. The kicker here is I was paying about $85 for internet only (tax, title and license) which they advertise at about $75. Oh, and don't get me started on this "That price is for new customers only" soap box.
ALWAYS ask that they give you the TOTAL monthly price, taxes, fees and equipment included. REFUSE to believe the ads you see....
Didn't the FCC solve this with the Cable Card thing? I have a media server that emulates a cable box for my whole house. Works great.
The only real problem here is that with the demise of Windows Media Center and Windows 7 there isn't a viable fully vetted option for me to turn to that will allow me to watch and DVR protected content. Yes, Silicon Dust is working on a version, but it's not yet certified (as far as I know) for protected content.
The FCC already solved this issue. Why are they trying to solve it again?
My bad... Yes.... http://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-...
Exactly.. Things like this are bouncing around in the back of hundreds of Pickups rumbling around west Texas right now. Yes, they are dangerous if you take them out of their containers, mostly to the idiots who do stupid things like breaking out the hacksaws, hammers and blow torches on things marked a radiation hazard. Making a "dirty bomb" out of 10oz of this stuff is more likely to harm the bomb maker than anybody else.
Yea, dang that Sadam lied to us before the war started about having those things and being willing to use them, never mind that he had used them before on his own people... BTW, he is dead now... Keep grinding that political ax, it's been more than a decade now.
You're right. It'd be much better for the American people to still be in the dark about the NSA's activities
I don't have any special privileges and I KNEW what the government was doing before Snowden did his thing. I may not have know the extent of what they where doing, but I sure knew the extent of what they COULD have been doing. I interviewed once with a company (now out of business) that provided the network monitoring tools that in hindsight where used for this program and having a telecommunications background may have helped me understand the ways the government could do stuff like this, but I'm surely not alone in my understanding of SS7 signaling and related technologies. It was obvious to me and I'm sure others what they where doing because they where not really trying to hide it.
All Snowden really accomplished (beyond his banishment) is drawing attention to the situation in a way that appealed to the press, helped along by the cloak and dagger motif and pictures of his "girlfriend" left behind. Well, power to him, but he was stupid. Like it or not, nothing has really changed, and where the "program" has been publicly shutdown now (being largely useless given it was common public knowledge) you can be sure it's been replaced with programs that have similar capabilities but less constitutional impact.
Boy, you nailed my age pretty close...
But you do realize that I said the following too:
Where electrical systems have vastly improved the reliability of the mechanical parts of an engine are still much better.
The majority of issues I've had with my vehicles over the last decade have been electrical and NOT mechanical, especially in the drive train (engine, transmission etc.) Yes, they are better these days, but the majority of repair issues are still electrical/electronic in nature.
I tried OpenWRT on a cheap TP-LINK router and it barely managed 1/3 of the throughput of the stock firmware.
I found your problem.. "cheap"
Try something a bit better such as the Netgear WRT1900AC which will perform at least as well with the stock firmware as the OpenWrt build.
P.S. Isn't it great how well the FCC listened to all those comments that they solicited? Don;t you feel like your voice matters? That you're part of the system? That your government works for you and takes your concerns into consideration?
The FCC, or more specifically the commissioners are political hacks, ALL of them. It's been a long time since the FCC was actually controlled by people who actually understood the technical and business issues upon which they decide. They are driven by lobbyists, political donations and the people who nominated them and not what's good for the people. It's sad, but that's what your government has become, The FCC is just one of the more obvious examples of it.
Exactly.. That Netgear WRT1900ACs is a sweet system. Nice CPU, two radios, Managed switch, Lots of flash, enough RAM, USB2 & 3 and even an eSATA connection. PLUS the manufacturer is running OpenWRT as their default firmware and are supporting the development by releasing the source code. Now with the "s" variant out, the plain WRT1900AC is available for just over $100. Hard to beat that. Heck, just using it for the managed switch part is almost cost effective for a 5 port switch, but add the routing, file sharing, USB ports and it's a fine multipurpose tool.
So what's to stop you from changing the boot loader? Most of these devices use U-Boot or some variant so if the manufacturers provide their U-Boot alterations, it's not like one cannot remove the "secure boot" option from the hardware. Yes, it may require JTAG and eliminate a lot of folks from just flashing third party stuff at the drop of a hat, but it's not like guys like me (who have the JTAG equipment) cannot do what we want.
You get what you pay for. If you go for the cheap solution, you get the cheap solution, always. Or to quote the article....
"Consumers should be aware that when buying especially lower-end devices made in China, there is a significant risk of the devices having serious flaws that won't ever be addressed," said Carsten Eiram, chief research officer at RBS
Besides, if you REALLY are security minded, who puts this kind of device just out in the wild for all to see and use? At least put it behind a VPN, where you can hope to control access to it. If nothing else, use a protected proxy connection.... Don't just put the HTTP/HTTPS port from some cheap device you own on the internet unless you really don't care who access it..
I hope life in Russia with the ever present possibility of deportation is worth it. Ok, so he can walk around at will, but he is not free to come home, is stuck in a declining country with an economy to match and must trot out before the cameras every time Putin decides he needs a pawn to poke the USA in the eye over some cyber security related issue. Not to mention that Russia can deport him at the drop of a hat, anytime it suits them. If he even tries to step outside of Russian territory he's risking capture, imprisonment, trial and the death penalty for what he did. Hope he likes it there, because as soon as he becomes irrelevant (and that's fast approaching) Putin will cut him loose and the best he can hope for is to be allowed to stay. If they depart him, it's game over.
By Citizens United, corporations have rights.
For the love of.... Corporations had RIGHTS long before the Citizen's United case. All that Citizen's United did was recognize that Corporations had First Amendment rights (free speech rights) and could participate in political campaigns.
I'm not going to adjudicate the SCOTUS decision here, but you guys who don't like the Citizen's United ruling do need to back down on the rhetoric a bit. This ruling does NOT grant a pile of new rights to corporations, it only established that they couldn't be barred from participating the political process. This wasn't a new right nor did it materially change the legal standing of corporations. All it really did was strike down some laws which where intended to keep corporate money from being used for political purposes.
I am very surprised that Apple have taken a stance like this. I expected all companies to simply "bow down" to a governments requests and threats and expected all my phone data to visible by almost any government; regardless of how much I personally oppose it. Im happy I have an iphone now.
Don't jump to conclusions too fast here. Ticking off a judge by refusing to honor his order is a really bad idea and refusing to assist the FBI in the investigation of a crime might not be a good thing in the future.
Unless Apple can prove that it really IS impossible to do what the Judge ordered, there will likely be sanctions if they continue to refuse. Sanctions can be fines, seizure of information and jail time for those responsible for saying "no" all of which can significantly harm Apple, who may end up doing what they have been ordered anyway.
I believe that this is possible. Further, before you mount the die, during the automated testing phase you could easily allow the test unit to make connections to the die in order to allow programming of the nonvolatile areas, then "blow the fuses" by application of specific voltages/currents so the device cannot be modified using the same process ever again. If you use a random enough data source for setting the key, it will be logically impossible to do anything but brute force the key.
Of course, it is all academic. If you have access to the physical device, it should be possible, though likely very difficult, to determine what you need to know to access the data on the phone, even without the pin. At the very least, one should be able to attach to the device, dump the encrypted content, duplicate it onto a emulated device and brute force the pin without having to worry about busting the original phone. Apple could do this if they wanted but it's going to take internal knowledge of the device's design and the software that runs it. I don't see this being dangerous to privacy as it's really just an attack that is going to require extended physical access to the phone by an army of people who are equipped with the necessary hardware, software and tools along with the necessary technical data. Surely Apple can do this for ONE phone.
My guess here is that if the FBI really wants to do this, they can easily force Apple to release the necessary technical data with appropriate NDA's and hire it done. My guess is they don't want it that badly but they will do what they can to hold Apple's feet to the fire by asking the judge for sanctions given his orders are not being followed. Apple may eventually find themselves in some seriously uncomfortable situations if they truly mean to press this.
How true.. If I worked for a drive manufacturer that builds spinning HDAs, I'd be looking for another job, FAST. Makes me happy that I didn't take that job at Maxstore a decade or so ago. Even if I survived the mergers and buyouts since then, I'd be in a world of hurt now.
Just a little bit more... Of course.
Disk space is like closet space and income. You will eventually use up all you have and need more.
There are rules for this kind of thing... Microsoft will be in serious trouble if they do what you suggest, as will that former general...
Would you prefer an "ARE YOU SURE?" dialog that only has the "OK" button?
Worth every penny they paid for it.....
Actually, I don't believe the volume license terms gives you the right to just upgrade all your windows 7 boxes to 10 like the full up individual licenses we have on hardware for home and small business use. The DOD will be paying for this mainly because they likely use volume licenses to start with and pay yearly for the privilege. There may not be much change in their license costs though, as Microsoft is clearly advantaged when they can more easily drop support for the older stuff and cay drop the teams of developers required. I'm sure Microsoft made the DOD an offer they couldn't refuse price wise...
Unlikely if they host legacy applications which will cost money to port forward to 10.
I'm aware of a lot of legacy applications which continue to run on OS choices as old as Windows 98 and likely will for as long as somebody can find hardware that Windows 98 can run on. Sometimes it's just too expensive to port and validate legacy applications and you take the security risks of running unsupported operating systems.
In the case of the Navy, they are still depending on Nuclear Missile systems designed in the 60's and built in the 70's for our nation's defense. One could imagine the whole system hasn't been substantially changed in 40+ years. Why are we surprised that they have legacy applications running on XP? I'm guessing there is stuff out there which is far older upon which our nation's defense rests.
Yea, so? They invented the Jerry Can to fix that and allow you to strap extra fuel to the running boards. That was easy... The electric car's "Range Anxiety" problem isn't going away even if you had quick chargers every 100 miles. Even an 80% charge takes 45 min for modern batteries, that's a long time to get you another 150 miles down the road. Strapping extra batteries on the running boards just isn't an option here and the charge time is largely a physical limitation of the battery and not easily overcome. Like I said before, we will see incremental improvements, but there will be no revolutionary changes in electric cars.