Slashdot Mirror


User: flopsquad

flopsquad's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
588
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 588

  1. Re:NSA enabled... permanently on New FCC Rules Could Ban WiFi Router Firmware Modification · · Score: 1

    I really don't think the NSA gives two shits about consumer routers when they pretty much "own" the internet backbone providers.

    This. Although I get the impression the NSA is a belt-and-suspenders kind of organization that would prefer to own you seven ways from Sunday rather than just six.

    Losing their (conjectured) router backdoors might get a shrug from them, or possibly even a "Shit, now Americans can't overwrite the Chinese backdoors that are baked in at the factory."

  2. Re:Never understand jailbreaking an Apple iOS devi on Over 225,000 Apple Accounts Compromised Via iOS Malware · · Score: 2

    There are quite a few nifty features and tweaks available to a JB device that aren't possible on stock iOS. As others have mentioned, finer grained OS controls like f.lux, the ability to actually interact with the filesystem (on the device or plugged in), disallowed apps like emulators, removing stock apps, etc. It drove me nuts that on my first iPhone, I could silence every singe sound and vibration--but every time I plugged it in, it buzzed at me. I had to jailbreak to get rid of that.

    As another poster stated, Apple are kind of design fascists. Phones, they decided for me, are just too small to support many of the multitouch gestures that the iPad uses. Jailbreak and you can have that (very useful, IMHO) functionality back. The quick access buttons are the ones they decide you need. Jailbreak and you can choose from a huge set of functions that, again, are really handy to be able to toggle quickly. I was turning certain device features (BT, hotspot, invert, etc) on and off frequently enough that creating buttons for them made a huge difference in user experience.

    Many of those features would be trivial for Apple to implement as advanced settings (hell, solitary coders are writing this stuff and giving it away for free), and not against the Apple ethos (unlike, say, emulators). But for now you have to expose yourself to security risks in order to do all this useful stuff with your expensive pocket computer.

    And Android is its own bag of cats. I've been in that bag with those cats and it's a longer story that I have time to write about here. Suffice it to say that not everything in the Adroidverse as universally open and moddable as it might appear from the iSide.

  3. Re: Headline leaves out one very important detail on Over 225,000 Apple Accounts Compromised Via iOS Malware · · Score: 1

    I would have had to root an iPhone to get those features and would have exposed myself.

    AFAIK, they recommend flashing the firmware, not a bus full of nuns.

  4. Re: Headline leaves out one very important detail on Over 225,000 Apple Accounts Compromised Via iOS Malware · · Score: 1

    When I purchased my Android phone I wanted a true Open VPN client and native access to the filesystem. Fortunately I could do that without rooting it. On the contrary I would have had to root an iPhone to get those features.

    This, I discovered the hard way, is not a universal quality of Android devices. Depending on the manufacturer and carrier, some are quite a bit less open than even iDevices.

  5. Re:What does Science have to say about this? on Massachusetts Boarding School Sued Over Wi-Fi Sickness · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bring in a portable faraday cage and have him sit in it.

    Sounds like reasonable accomodation to me, problem solved.

    "Thus arose, in the early 20's, a small subculture of spherically encased children known as 'Faraday Hamsters.'

    Enabled by a 2017 Supreme Court interpretation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, these 'Faraday Hamsters' could frequently be seen running their electromagnetically impervious cages down school hallways along special troughs--evocative of the famous boulder chase scene in the 20th century classic, Raiders of the Lost Ark."

    --Collected Histories of the Twenty-First Century

  6. IceCube on Re-Examined IceCube Data Firms Up Case For Extra-Galactic Neutrinos · · Score: 4, Funny

    “It is sound confirmation that the discovery of cosmic neutrinos from beyond our galaxy is real," said the IceCube team leader, adding, "Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central LA... today was a good day."

  7. Re:That's Funny... on Hackers Publish Cheating Site's Stolen Data · · Score: 1

    I also guess a bunch of them were going "Oh shit!"

    Yeah, for some it may just be easier to gather all their clients in a small auditorium and tell them, "Ok, each of you just lost the house, the kids, and the frequent flier miles."

  8. Re:Half the story on Ask Slashdot: How To "Prove" a Work Is Public Domain? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, pretty much. Anything to make sure the rights never run out.

  9. Re:Half the story on Ask Slashdot: How To "Prove" a Work Is Public Domain? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bingo. In fact, the Supreme Court has explicitly come out and said that trademark is not to be used as back door perpetual copyright. See, e.g., Dastar.

  10. Re:Not sure if Google abandoned Lenovo... on Lenovo Installed Software On Laptops That Persisted After Complete Wipes · · Score: 1

    The news on for instance Ars today is that they want PCs to adopt the same persistenting software Apple devices have where they reinstall OS X even after you wiped it completely from the system.

    If it's the "undeletable" OSX partition you're talking about, it's doable (have completely wiped a MBP drive and reinstalled fresh). Pain in the ass, but doable.

    If it's a BIOS thing like TFS, I got no dukes. Wouldn't be surprised, though.

  11. No, AC has a point. It's clear from AC's post that he recalibrated the relativistic equations to account for the fact that Earth exist as 4 - 90 degree opposite corner quadrants, but not as a 360 degree circle--4 Simultaneous Days Rotate In Same 24 Hours Of Earth, 4 Earth corners rotate 4 Time corners.

    Earth is Cubic opposites, nothing as circle. Duh.

  12. IIRC, there are some theories where, out of the sea of nothing* that is a heat-dead universe, and on unfathomably long time scales (~10^45 years?)**, a new cosmic expansion event could happen randomly and birth a new universe. (Mumble mumble, quantum field fluctuations, symmetry breaking, mumble.)

    Thus, infinite universes could be born and die, on an infinite timeline. Even if this is true, it's still pretty special to exist.

    *Nothing except for virtual particle+antiparticle pairs popping in and out of existence.
    **Assuming "time" really means anything in an era where there is no greater state of entropy to give time its arrow.

  13. Re:Already patched on Severe Deserialization Vulnerabilities Found In Android, 3rd Party Android SDKs · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the explanation, +5 Informative.

    I'm still getting familiar with the Android world, having recently stormed away from iOS (frustrating lack of control over the OS, even when jailbroken). I was headed for freedom, baby! So imagine my surprise when my new Android phone is locked down tighter than my old Apple phone. At least that I could jailbreak and it never had forced OTA updates (wtf?).

    I've been keeping an eye out for a workable root solution. Tumbleweeds. (And pingpong has an expiration date prior to any Active builds.) This phone is going back anyway, since it is less waterproof than advertised. :(

    The new Nexus looks promising, and the OnePlus 2 could be cool if they made more than 50 of them. I dunno, even the upcoming iPhone will probably be hackable before the Active...

  14. Re:Already patched on Severe Deserialization Vulnerabilities Found In Android, 3rd Party Android SDKs · · Score: 1

    Good point, it'd be much harder to do a bunch of nasty stuff on a feature phone that just can't do much other than make phone calls. I use so many apps and smartphone features on a daily basis that it'd be tough to go back, though.

    But you're right, it is just a matter of wanting my device to work exactly how I want it to, and fiddle with the guts. And not compromise on any other features (waterproofing notwithstanding... that has been less effective than advertised).

  15. Re:Already patched on Severe Deserialization Vulnerabilities Found In Android, 3rd Party Android SDKs · · Score: 1

    Nah, just trying to get a semi-technical question that had been bugging me, answered by a poster more knowledgeable than I. With all the scary exploits getting press, I was curious why no one had harnessed one for our benefit. And GP answered--none of them are as scary as they'd need to be in order to do that.

  16. Re:Already patched on Severe Deserialization Vulnerabilities Found In Android, 3rd Party Android SDKs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Serious question for an Android security team member:

    With three major, ecosystem-wide exploits published just in the last week or so, why can I still not get root on my S6 Active? My (limited) understanding is that attackers could own me and a billion other people six ways from Sunday, but when it comes to just owning my own phone... ?

  17. Read Headlines Too Fast on Researcher Exploits 18-Year-Old Design Flaw To Compromise X86 Chips · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's what I get for scrolling through the headlines too fast--I see "One Night in the Hotel Room of the Future, Researcher Exploits 18-Year-Old"...

  18. Re:WTF can we do? on TPP Copyright Chapter Leaks: Website Blocking, New Criminal Rules On the Way · · Score: 3, Informative

    The noun form of "elite" refers to one or more. It has no plural form, any more than "sick" does. It just makes you sound ignorant when you say "elites". Do you say "helping the sicks"?

    That's an overly narrow take on the word "elite" and its various meanings. Yes, in one construction, "elite" is a (usually plural) collective noun referring to a class of people or things that are superior. "The Silicon Valley elite are conspiring to keep the lowly programmer down, man!"

    But unlike "sick," "elite" need not be a collective noun. Right there in the dictionary definition, you can see a member of "the elite" is "an elite," and multiple such members would be plural "elites." Just because you have 3 Rockefellers and 2 Kennedys in a room together, does not reconstitute the whole murky cabal that is "the elite"--you have 5 elites. This construction also conveys a subtle connotation of particularity. You may say the "wealthy elite" are, as a class, not paying enough taxes, but you'd refer to "wealthy elites" who are being investigated for tax evasion.

    Now, GP's usage is closer to the first meaning, and it would've been fine to use "elite." But, whether intended or not, using "elites" gives the statement a slightly different spin. It reads not as [the whole of landed gentry] or [the class of one percenters], but rather a nonspecific-but-interested subset of the wealthy and powerful who want to further criminalize infringement of their IP.

  19. Re:Well, I did read TFA... on Microsoft Creates a Quantum Computer-Proof Version of TLS Encryption Protocol · · Score: 1

    Thanks for posting this explanation!

  20. Re:No performance enhancing drugs? on Pro Gamers To Be Tested For Doping · · Score: 1

    I think the greatest lie ever told was that Gamer Fuel(TM) actually is a performance enhancing substance.

  21. Re:Not Stupid Enough on Universal Pictures Wants To Remove Localhost and IMDB Pages From Google Results · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the WIPO/DMCA info!

    For those /.ers who not only like to read TFA but also the source material, the WIPO article mandating member countries adopt anti-circumvention laws is here.

    And just to clarify the term length provision, WIPO is an add on to Berne 1971, and Berne requires a term of at least life plus 50. The current longest term is apparently Mexico, with life plus 100.

  22. Re:Not Stupid Enough on Universal Pictures Wants To Remove Localhost and IMDB Pages From Google Results · · Score: 1

    Legally near-impossible, as it's required by international agreement.

    This aspect doesn't get enough attention. I researched copyright reform ideas for a paper in law school, and found (to my surprise, even though I follow IP stuff pretty closely) that we are hamstrung many times over in what reforms we could actually enact, on account of treaties we largely bullied the rest of the world into signing.

    Term reduction, mandatory registration, escalating fee structures... none of that is really on the table in light of our treaty obligations. Not only do ratified treaties sit in a sweet spot just south of the Constitution itself, but these particular ones we've been pushing hard for decades. I was unaware of the mandatory encryption-breaking prohibition, but it does not surprise me.

  23. Re:Not Stupid Enough on Universal Pictures Wants To Remove Localhost and IMDB Pages From Google Results · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I recently read an excellent piece that addressed this subject. The proposed two-pronged solution was quite modest and yet could fix most of the DMCA problems in one fell swoop.

    1) Apply penalty of perjury to the entirety of the takedown notice, just as it is currently applied to counternotices.

    2) Take away safe harbor status not only for failing to abide by the notice process, but also for failing to abide by the counternotice process.

    Neither is earthshatteringly new, but it would take all of two lines of ink and a bit of political will. User-generated content companies like Google and Facebook could even provide that will. #1 is unambiguously good for them because it will lead to fewer DMCA notices they have to deal with. And even though #2 looks bad for them, it actually makes their lives much easier in that it legally mandates they do what they want to anyway (but which studios try to prevent): keep content up with minimal hassle.

    Note the bullshit Universal that was pulling back in 2007--issuing blanket (i.e. not in good faith) takedown notices for Prince's music to everyone on the internet (including the mom who posted video of her kids dancing)--is still being litigated.

  24. Re:Age floor only, or ceiling and floor? on New Facebook Video Controls Let You Limit Viewing By Gender and Age · · Score: 1

    I'm going to restrict my channel of "How to Get Kids Off Your Lawn" tutorial videos to retirement age and up.

    Course, my series "Three Seconds of Your Favorite Rap Song, Ten Hours of 20KHz Sine Wave" will be 18 and under.

  25. Just exactly how do they propose 'taking out' a drone? I can only hope that they're not thinking about shooting out of the sky. Remember, any bullets that go up must come down

    Water cannon? I'm sure they could outfit the water drop helicopters with a high pressure, low volume hose for just this purpose.