All this stuff makes me want to hug my Mac and be thankful that Apple doesn't pull this shit.
Of course, that doesn't mean they might not pull this shit someday, and they already pull different shit (a security update broke the ethernet port on some iMacs recently for example). But every time I get annoyed at Apple about something I look across the aisle at Microsoft and it just seems a hell of a lot worse over there.
Also, Linux... My Linux server has been completely trouble free and stable as a rock.
I wouldn't do something like this from my own IP address. That would be quite daft. I would instead find an open Wifi, or use a VPN or some other network where it can't be traced to me.
This is just going to get the owner of the IP snared up in the court system for no good reason. Microsoft should just invalidate the keys that were stolen and move on.
The country is prosperous, the state is firmly in power without any real challenge to it... Why do they feel the need to micromanage the Internet this way?
I remember this on my Bellsouth/AT&T DSL line years ago. It made my system log mostly dhcp renewals. They never did fix it either; dealt with it until I moved to cable.
Comcast may suck in other ways but at least their lease times are several days.
The thing is, this isn't a case of the chipset not working because of incompatibility bugs. This is the case of INTENTIONALLY breaking it. Liability becomes hazy at this point, and I feel FTDI should be responsible for this.
It's amazing how much of a big deal they make about this, when they still get paid regardless of where you watch.
The content industry seems to put Netflix VPN users right up there with being bad as pirates! Umm, hello, they're still PAYING for their content. And the content owners are being paid, even if the path is different than it would be otherwise.
It's a big mess; we really need to start wiping out geographic barriers to content availability. One world, one internet.
Anyone else getting tired of is term? All it means is "someone else's computer". All you're doing is renting server space and replicating your data there. There's nothing special about it.
Looks like Brazil's telecoms need to join the 21st century and stop charging to send tiny bits of data around.
If they can't survive without this particular revenue, surely they can find revenue elsewhere? The US telecoms have had no problem thriving after they stopped charging for SMS, minutes and long distance! They just ream us on data now, which, although it sucks, is a hell of a lot better than paying 10 cents per text message.
By the way: I love Telegram and use it all the time, but I just wanted to remind you that it can be blocked as well.
When the people in power want something done, the geeks (who just want everyone to be happy usually) have to comply, or they will be replaced by other people who will do it. That includes censoring and ruining the Internet.
I look back and wonder what the heck Intel was thinking with NetBurst. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but how did Intel's product roadmap get THAT messed up?
And what's crazy is they still sold tons of the things.
The bad guys are just going to keep using existing software that doesn't have these backdoors (esp open source software that can be vetted). In other words, this legislation will accomplish absolutely nothing but making mainstream communication tools less secure.
All good things come to an end. I'm convinced of this. Nothing cool like Twitter can exist long before idiots try to ruin it.
This is making me less excited about new sites and tech as I get older because I know that if I use it and get to love it, it will be ruined right under my nose. Kinda depressing, no?
Another example is the Music app on iOS. It was beautiful and perfect, and Apple f**ked it all up and made it ugly, overly complex and glitchy.
They have the information. They can release it any time.
You might pay the ransom, then they'll demand more money a year down the line.
It sucks that the customer data got released, but paying a ransom isn't the right way to deal with this. Improve security, make it harder to breach the systems. Paying ransoms just encourages more ransoms in the future.
If the criminals know they'll never get their ransom paid, they'll stop. (and move onto other criminal endeavors I'm sure... but that's criminals for ya)
This is true. USB parallel ports are only implemented far enough to get printers working. Pretty much nothing else from the dark ages will work.
Serial ports are a bit better, but still have compatibility issues because most of them just use TTL level (5 volt) signaling, whereas RS232 specified 12 volts. The better ones have voltage multipliers onboard that will provide the necessary higher voltages; if you want to hook up vintage terminals to your computer using a USB serial port, these are often required.
Centronics parallel ports are something that I do not miss. Even slightly.
Before the USB era, pretty much every peripheral that needed a faster connection than serial but was too cheap to implement SCSI used a parallel port. Webcams (Connectix QuickCam was a famous one), Zip drives, laplink cables, etc... it was insane. Parallel ports provided no power, so these devices either required a power brick or stole power from the AT/PS2 keyboard interface.
When it worked, great! When it didn't, good luck getting it working. I always used to pay a little more for SCSI when it was available because it was faster and a million times more reliable.
Remember the Zip Drive Plus? It was a drive that could either do SCSI or Parallel on the same port. I like to think of it as the height of the clunky, kludge-filled world we had before USB.
If the personal computer market ever had a "savior", it would be USB. It was truly a dark time before that.
Can someone explain why ALL THE MAJOR DISTROS have switched to systemd, when all I've seen is universal hate for it?
Either distro maintainers are masochists, or there's someone pulling strings somewhere to get this bullshit into every distribution.
We've slowed our move to newer versions of RHEL and Ubuntu at my workplace because of systemd. Eventually we're going to have to deal with it, but we're putting it off as long as we can. Everyone I know hates this thing. HOW did it become so pervasive?
This is a $400 speaker. Are you saying people are such sheep that after doing a firmware update that breaks the speaker, they wouldn't bitch to the manufacturer? I find it hard to believe anyone would give up on a $400 speaker that quickly, unless they are rich and $400 is nothing to them.
Why the heck don't these devices have a "Reset to factory settings" button?
Flash memory is cheap. Have a permanent, unmodifiable copy of the firmware the device ships with. If you power it on while holding the button, copy that firmware over as the active firmware, clear out the user data area, and restart. Boom! TV is back to normal.
This sort of thing is ludicrously easy to implement and would save the companies money on warranty repairs.
I have a JBL speaker that I had to ship back to the manufacturer to be replaced because of a bad firmware update. A simple reset button like the one I described would have saved me a ton of pain and saved JBL money on shipping the speaker both ways. WHY isn't this sort of thing universal?
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All this stuff makes me want to hug my Mac and be thankful that Apple doesn't pull this shit.
Of course, that doesn't mean they might not pull this shit someday, and they already pull different shit (a security update broke the ethernet port on some iMacs recently for example). But every time I get annoyed at Apple about something I look across the aisle at Microsoft and it just seems a hell of a lot worse over there.
Also, Linux... My Linux server has been completely trouble free and stable as a rock.
...well, unless they are a complete idiot.
I wouldn't do something like this from my own IP address. That would be quite daft. I would instead find an open Wifi, or use a VPN or some other network where it can't be traced to me.
This is just going to get the owner of the IP snared up in the court system for no good reason. Microsoft should just invalidate the keys that were stolen and move on.
It's not like it's hard to export things over the Internet, even if it's "against the law", and it only has to be done once.
This sounds like a law put in place more for "the feels" than to actually accomplish anything.
The country is prosperous, the state is firmly in power without any real challenge to it... Why do they feel the need to micromanage the Internet this way?
"Judge orders arsonist to unburn-down house"
Good luck with that.
I remember this on my Bellsouth/AT&T DSL line years ago. It made my system log mostly dhcp renewals. They never did fix it either; dealt with it until I moved to cable.
Comcast may suck in other ways but at least their lease times are several days.
Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.
They should tell Hollywood to get bent. Piracy is going to happen regardless of what they do; this is money wasted anyway.
The thing is, this isn't a case of the chipset not working because of incompatibility bugs. This is the case of INTENTIONALLY breaking it. Liability becomes hazy at this point, and I feel FTDI should be responsible for this.
Yep, Microsoft should revoke WHQL on future driver versions and refuse to certify FTDI drivers in the future.
This is a blatant violation of trust; end users have no way to know if the FTDI chips in their devices are genuine.
It's amazing how much of a big deal they make about this, when they still get paid regardless of where you watch.
The content industry seems to put Netflix VPN users right up there with being bad as pirates! Umm, hello, they're still PAYING for their content. And the content owners are being paid, even if the path is different than it would be otherwise.
It's a big mess; we really need to start wiping out geographic barriers to content availability. One world, one internet.
Anyone else getting tired of is term? All it means is "someone else's computer". All you're doing is renting server space and replicating your data there. There's nothing special about it.
Looks like Brazil's telecoms need to join the 21st century and stop charging to send tiny bits of data around.
If they can't survive without this particular revenue, surely they can find revenue elsewhere? The US telecoms have had no problem thriving after they stopped charging for SMS, minutes and long distance! They just ream us on data now, which, although it sucks, is a hell of a lot better than paying 10 cents per text message.
By the way: I love Telegram and use it all the time, but I just wanted to remind you that it can be blocked as well.
When the people in power want something done, the geeks (who just want everyone to be happy usually) have to comply, or they will be replaced by other people who will do it. That includes censoring and ruining the Internet.
It sucks. :(
What good is that going to do when said photographs are already backed up on the cloud?
Think about it.. the more photos of your "designer object" are out there, the more people will find out it exists and decide to buy one from you.
This is not like taking a photo of a painting where the image itself is what's valuable.
I look back and wonder what the heck Intel was thinking with NetBurst. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but how did Intel's product roadmap get THAT messed up?
And what's crazy is they still sold tons of the things.
The bad guys are just going to keep using existing software that doesn't have these backdoors (esp open source software that can be vetted). In other words, this legislation will accomplish absolutely nothing but making mainstream communication tools less secure.
All good things come to an end. I'm convinced of this. Nothing cool like Twitter can exist long before idiots try to ruin it.
This is making me less excited about new sites and tech as I get older because I know that if I use it and get to love it, it will be ruined right under my nose. Kinda depressing, no?
Another example is the Music app on iOS. It was beautiful and perfect, and Apple f**ked it all up and made it ugly, overly complex and glitchy.
Nothing good lasts forever.
Microsoft seems to have a fetish for making licensing complicated.
I suppose since they practically invented the concept it makes sense. But damn, how far can it go?
They have the information. They can release it any time.
You might pay the ransom, then they'll demand more money a year down the line.
It sucks that the customer data got released, but paying a ransom isn't the right way to deal with this. Improve security, make it harder to breach the systems. Paying ransoms just encourages more ransoms in the future.
If the criminals know they'll never get their ransom paid, they'll stop. (and move onto other criminal endeavors I'm sure... but that's criminals for ya)
This is true. USB parallel ports are only implemented far enough to get printers working. Pretty much nothing else from the dark ages will work.
Serial ports are a bit better, but still have compatibility issues because most of them just use TTL level (5 volt) signaling, whereas RS232 specified 12 volts. The better ones have voltage multipliers onboard that will provide the necessary higher voltages; if you want to hook up vintage terminals to your computer using a USB serial port, these are often required.
Centronics parallel ports are something that I do not miss. Even slightly.
Before the USB era, pretty much every peripheral that needed a faster connection than serial but was too cheap to implement SCSI used a parallel port. Webcams (Connectix QuickCam was a famous one), Zip drives, laplink cables, etc... it was insane. Parallel ports provided no power, so these devices either required a power brick or stole power from the AT/PS2 keyboard interface.
When it worked, great! When it didn't, good luck getting it working. I always used to pay a little more for SCSI when it was available because it was faster and a million times more reliable.
Remember the Zip Drive Plus? It was a drive that could either do SCSI or Parallel on the same port. I like to think of it as the height of the clunky, kludge-filled world we had before USB.
If the personal computer market ever had a "savior", it would be USB. It was truly a dark time before that.
Can someone explain why ALL THE MAJOR DISTROS have switched to systemd, when all I've seen is universal hate for it?
Either distro maintainers are masochists, or there's someone pulling strings somewhere to get this bullshit into every distribution.
We've slowed our move to newer versions of RHEL and Ubuntu at my workplace because of systemd. Eventually we're going to have to deal with it, but we're putting it off as long as we can. Everyone I know hates this thing. HOW did it become so pervasive?
This is a $400 speaker. Are you saying people are such sheep that after doing a firmware update that breaks the speaker, they wouldn't bitch to the manufacturer? I find it hard to believe anyone would give up on a $400 speaker that quickly, unless they are rich and $400 is nothing to them.
Why the heck don't these devices have a "Reset to factory settings" button?
Flash memory is cheap. Have a permanent, unmodifiable copy of the firmware the device ships with. If you power it on while holding the button, copy that firmware over as the active firmware, clear out the user data area, and restart. Boom! TV is back to normal.
This sort of thing is ludicrously easy to implement and would save the companies money on warranty repairs.
I have a JBL speaker that I had to ship back to the manufacturer to be replaced because of a bad firmware update. A simple reset button like the one I described would have saved me a ton of pain and saved JBL money on shipping the speaker both ways. WHY isn't this sort of thing universal?