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  1. US MIT not relevant - IPv6 to be consumer driven. on MIT Technology Review Slams IPv6 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    IPv6 will help satisfy the demand for IP addresses for a wide variety of consumer electronics.

    When you think consumer gadgets then the US isn't the first country to come to mind - its Japan, Taiwan and China, Malaysia, Korea and the Philippines (in no particular order).

    If every gadget gets an IPv6 ip address then its irrlevant what some ex-MIT/Mass commentator thinks. Asian and especially the Japanese with KAME, are sniffing around for another edge that they can get.

    Once the millions of games consoles get IP for LAN parties then ISP are going to be driven kicking and screaming into IPv6. Console sales outnumber PC sales so what Microsoft think here is irrelevant (unless its XBox related). Nope, in the same way that GSM eclipsed older analogue Cellular networks (with multi-billion costs in upgrades), then IPv6 will eclipse the older IPv4 and the drive will be consumer gadget driven.

  2. Google should not pay: Google should move to *BSD. on SCO Approaches Google About Linux Licenses · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Immediately Google pays even a single penny to SCO then they would have a risk that SCO could unilaterally hike license fees forever.

    Google should not pay but declare their intent to move to a *bsd like OpenBSD or FreeBSD. This would protect their IPO and also derisk their IPO by mitigating any involvment with SCO.

    The true colors of SCO are showing very well because whenever you see 'discussions with people At a low level' its a hostile way of using the press as your PR. Its not a nice way of doing business.

  3. Put 50VDC discharger onto 80VDC Telex battery bank on What is the Worst Tech Mistake You Ever Made? · · Score: 1
    Worked in a Telephone exchange in early 80's and did all sorts of stuff but also did conditioning cycles on batteries. These are 10,000 AmpHour banks - i.e. say 850 Amp discarge at 50VDC for 10 hours.

    These batteries are not fused. The inrush current of larger mechanical Telephone exchanges was over 2500 amps @50VDC - so though the voltage is low its DC and when it arcs then kiss goodbye to whatever is now welded to the bussbar. It'll stay arcing until its welded itself into slag. Thus I was very cautious of any metal objects.

    You normally check batteries by doing a discharge cycle. You discharge through a heater at say 1/10th (or 1/15th) of the total Amp hr rating and monitor Specific Gravity (about 40 cells reading every 15 minutes so takes while and its hot work with say 850Amp x 50 VDC heater running and fans.

    One day was paying usual close attention to my own body parts and the buss bars but failed to notice I'd just coupled the 50VDC heater to one of the Telex battery banks. These are two banks + and - 80 VDC with respect to earth. A full +/-80VDC to earth Telex signal hurts real bad whereas 50VDC just tingles. Remember I = V/R but power = V squared /R so 80 VDC compared to 50VDC would provide about 2 1/2 times more power in watts for any given resistance thus you used a different heater.

    Went back to heater (this is a mobile cage thing about size of very big chest freezer. Set starting current and turned on. Flash - bang. I nearly shit myself. Fortunately the heaters sections are fused but remember this heater is designed to run continuous at 850 amps current at 50VDC so each section shares quite high current loads and being DC it arcs really bad so it has springs to wack the bits away and break the arc. Had to stop work for the day cause I was sweating. Next time I'll check which heater and not set a starting load when turning on.

    ps: worked 8 years in Telephone exchanges. Only major issue was the one above (apart from wrapping a company car around a power pole before that). Spent first 4 years learning electromechanicals then next 4 learning digital and got lots of overtime ripping out the old equipment. I did get impaled through shoulder by an equipment rack that dropped on me when gutting an exchange that was going to digital - so we're evens in Karma !

  4. Helps ISP brand not SPAMs. on AOL Now Publishing SPF Records · · Score: 1
    This is to help stop crafted return addresses and as the site says - stops brand dilution - if you are an ISP.

    Now I wonder if my ISP will now remove the SMTP port 25 block on my ADSL line so that my dynDNS can work without having to use the DynDNS port redirection ?

  5. Handy even for MS's own contract forms ! on Microsoft Word Forms Passwords Hacked · · Score: 1
    Some MS contracts (e.g. Schools Agreements) are also provided forms (at least in verson 3.1). Handy to now change clauses you don't like ! Not.

  6. Re:28 countries exempt on U.S. Begins Digital Fingerprinting In Airports · · Score: 1
    You are right that fingerprinting isn't going to solve anything. The next generation of suicide bombers generally don't expect to leave the US and will be clean of history. They are quite happy to leave a legitimate identity trail. Alternatively they will be smuggled in just like the many millions of others via sea or land. Fingerprinting visitors from a few non-visa waiver countries has to be like "re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic".

    The Sept/11 people moved about with impunity within the US too !. With those few incidents the vector was DOMESTIC flights NOT International arrivals.

  7. Maybe we need a email - FAX service ... on fax.com Finally Fined $5M For Fax Spam · · Score: 5, Funny

    1) Build an email -> FAX gateway with catchall domain.

    2) Put semantically overloaded email addresses into OPT-OUT/Cancel/Remove links on various web sites.

    3) Wait for FAXES to print out.

    4) Start legal procedings in small claims.

    5) ...

    6) Profit.

  8. His source code is free speech and now GPL'd. on DVD-Jon Breaks iTunes Encryption For Linux Users · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I thought Jon with the DeCSS was initially a 1-trick pony given the compromised XING keys helped DeCSS on its way but looks like he is really something else.

    The fact still remains, those 1000 lines of code represent his (and others) thoughts and ideas and be they English or C they are free speech. Thats probbaly why there are no comments - the code is the comment.

    This time he has used GPL v2 license. DeCSS was NOT originally for Linux but was for Windows and was not GPL'd. Thus from free speech point of view DeCSS was tainted. This time he has at least used the correct license if he expects the code to stay free.

    By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. - Voltaire

  9. Re:EU Galileo should offer even more accuracy. on Equine Speedometers · · Score: 1

    I should have qualified that as blinkered as you do with race horses.

  10. EU Galileo should offer even more accuracy. on Equine Speedometers · · Score: 1
    Hopefully the EU won't give in to the US pressure and cripple the Galileo project because that'll give solution providers even more accuracy.

    Galileo Leaflet

    Unfortunately I think tunnel vision (just like a horse !) defence issues will prevail over the potential money to be made from extremely accurate geolocation technology. And boy there is a lot of money to be made here - 200 Billion according to EU estimates.

    And before I get modeed as a Troll - Terrorists don't need accurate telemetry. When a bomb goes off at 30,000 feet who give a sh*t where its located - it probably used some crappy pressure sensor. The suicide car/truck bomber doesn't check their GPS to verify the exact position and the twin towers were fairly f*cking obvious targets using domestic technology. Accurate GPS actually STOPS collateral damage by providing accurate geolocation for ordanance. The more accurate a missile is the less chance of collateral damage. If a foreign power e.g. North Korea decided to launch missiles at a US base then if you were living near a military base would you prefer an ACCURATE missile or something thats got a good chance of hitting you ! Of course defence advisers will say ACCURATE GPS is a BAD thing without qualifying - its BAD for the military NOT The taxpayer.

  11. Parts ultimately use US or 1st world technology. on The Hidden Costs of Bargain Electronics · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Pull apart a DVD. You'll find usual metals, plastics and components you'd expect in a high tech product. Reduce each of those parts to its raw materials and you'll find gold, copper, oil, iron, aluminum and a whole range of other more complex raw materials.

    These raw materials will have been abstracted from many parts of the world using a mixture of Japanese, European and US mining technology. Many of the companies would be US influenced even if its for geological technology (assaying, and other high tech geophysics fields like seismics, microgravity).

    The chips are probably fabricated in a plant that uses US technology even if its physically located in a cheaper country like Malaysia.

    Metal pressing plants maybe Japanese or Korean but stamping dies may be cut with tool bits from Europe using US origin CAM. You wouldn't know unless you looked at a specific plant but you can be certain that the computers were probably not Chinese and most precision machine tools are not Chinese.

    The semi/finished parts shipped from wherever to China using Korean or Japanese made ships. Flagged as Liberian or Panama using British officers but cheap locals. Ship runs on Saudi fuel traded out of Singapore using US made computers to settle transactions. Trucked from dockside to wherever in China and now its assembled in factories. The factory conditions may not be perfect by US middle class standards but its a job. That ship could equally easily drop off those parts in any country in South east Asia and the local truckers would be happy to transport those parts. Thats an important point !

    Assembled, boxed and shipped to US. Trucked from US (LA) dockside to transhipping warehouses, then to stores. All the way US labour used at US ports, trucks and warehouses. No one questions the LA dockers pay conditions !

    The author is just looking at one or two intermediate steps in the whole of the product life cycle in what looks like a political agenda. The whole system is tuned to shift the parts to any country at the drop of a tool. This is capitalism (well Adam Smith's form of competitive advantage) and it works because the alternatives have been repeatedly shown to not work. Eventually China will be too expensive and work will flow to even cheaper countries. Until that time you'll do a lot more harm by denying the Chinese labour force their cut because you don't feel you could stomach that work.

    He seems quite happy to try to export US labour laws into China but I imagine there would be a bit of a cry from him if Europeans tried to export EU labour laws to the US !

  12. Can't target spammers - target the links !. on What You Get When You Buy a Spam CD · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Good to see that the emails CDs are crap because it means that the really expensive lists that spam intermediaries trade depend upon the live/not live status. This is found out via magic flags in links on the emails or by naive humans hitting remove links.

    But the analysis shows that the raw lists are not all junk but still have value. What we now need to do is now polute the status of these.

    This can be done by actually visiting every link that a spam offers to you and checking the content of that page.

    It sounds like this would alert the spammers to your email being alive and unique and as an individual this would be a bad thing BUT what if EVERYONE did this ?. The web site would be hit (err just like a /.) in proportion to how much they supported spam.

    Especially effective if done at a Brightgmail/ISP level where is behind the scenes and hasn't even hit your account. And no one can say that visiting a link is something illegal.

    The analogy is shouting into a room of people and saying IS ANYONE HERE. If just 1 person replies then thats information. If everyone yells back then thats NOISE. Effectively what would happen is that a spammer sends out 1 Million emails and is say 250,000 replied back and visited their web site then they would have to seriously question if that was an effective campaign. Traditional media people would say yes BUT those 250,000 visits are in fact robots looking like humans. Aint no sales from robots and just left with a large bandwidth bill.

    What its saying is we need a co-ordinated community to effectively stop spam. Just a thought. What I haven't worked out is how to stop spammers using this as a DDOS attack. I suspect a robots directive but haven't worked out the logic yet.

  13. Re:Powerpoint on Israel Suspends MS Office Purchases For Now · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Open Office 1.1 Presentation has hyperlinks to other documents and really is just as good especially as you can also publish as a PDF or Flash file.

    I've found that for technical stuff a good presentation doesn't need Powerpoint: it needs a working product demonstration but if you do then I find its best as an aid-memoire not as a transcript of what I'm saying.

  14. Re:Fantastic! on Israel's Finance Ministry To Distribute OpenOffice · · Score: 2, Insightful
    In one phrase - only Final Goods contribute to Gross domestic product.

    Software generally are intermediate goods - it doesn't add to the GDP of a country (or globally) no matter what Microsoft say. No work has been done when an item valued at $100 is given away. Thought the scenario a) seems to show a $30 billion industry in fact all that has done is remove nearly $30 billion from the money supply because Microsoft charge a lot more than they ever pay their programmers or even shareholders. The rest sits in the bank in cash doing nothing. In scenario b) though MS may say that they gave away $30 billion of software in fact they have given away nothing of any value as no money has actually been exchanged. That $100 per person thats not being given to Microsoft will end up being used more usefully in other ways.

    You can also reduce this to a view that value is only added when you add human labour. Taking some bunch of EXE/DLLs and adding a $100 price to it doesn't instantly create a $30 billion industry whereas if $100 was paid directly to 500,000 programmers 600 times over then you could argue that you have a $30 billion industry.

    Fact remains that if I download Linux and pay my $100 for the books/manuals or an extra hard disk then more value have been added to the economy than if I simply paid $100 to MS. Thus spending money on Open Source software contributes a lot more to the GDP than if its used on packaged products.

  15. Re:No copyrights? on Free Software In Iran, KDE In Farsi · · Score: 1
    No its not forever on financial rights. See the article 12.

    Article 4 is the moral rights only not the financial stuff AFAICS. No one can ever deny that the intellectual property was the authors and so it never should. If author X writes Y then they have written that and so it shall be forever.

    Its also the financial rights that are contentious WRT the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of the US.

    So see the Iran Article 12. The financial rights of the author, the subject of this law, are transferred to his heirs, or by covenant, for a period of thirty years after his death. In the absence of such heirs or a transfer by covenant, the Ministry of Culture and Arts will hold the rights for public use for the same period of time.

  16. Re:No copyrights? on Free Software In Iran, KDE In Farsi · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Why do they have to sign some International Copyright Agreement ?

    Its domestic law that counts as it sets the obligations of the people in that country. As far as I can see (IANAL) they have fairly standard copyright laws except that the time period is shorter than e.g. US or EU copyright law.

    Unesco copyright summary for Iran

    Obviously certain corporates would have an issue with the lack of extended copyright as the US has but the intent of copyright was always to help the authors in their own lifetime not maintaining the monopoly of corporate copyright holders. I'll probably be modded down as flamebait by some paid-for corporate astroturfer now !

  17. Why not RFID tags on anything sent into space ? on Shuttle Fleet Upgraded · · Score: 1
    If we tag it with RFID dots then proximity sensors could pick up what it is/was and who owned it last and thus help on any legal proceedings.

  18. Rely on software not the hardware: always use VPN. on The Year 2003 in Wireless Network Security · · Score: 1
    Give that WiFI was crippled from birth I assume its clear even if its WEP-64. It would have been so easy to add DH key exchange plus strong crypto or use the SSL style encryption handshakes but no they invent their own. OK maybe I missed the fine technical details on WEP but its not exactly trused is it whereas SSLv3 (of a suitable key length and algorithm) is trusted.

    So yes I have WEP and MAC filters turned on my Home Wireless but the Access Point (infrastructure mode) is on its own DMZ LAN and plugged into a Linux box. This Linux box has 3 Ethernets - the ADSL router and trusted LAN connections plus the Wireless LAN. The firewalling is all done via iptables configured using FWBuilder on a different Linux machine-I really recommend FWBuilder once you get into it.

    The firewalling ONLY allows PPTP tunnels to be setup from WiFI clients. The Linux PPTP server is PoPToP on Linux side and standard PPTP client with WinXP on Laptop side. The laptop thus gets allocated a new IP address for the tunnel from within my trusted address space (so as to thus get through iptable filters OK) on the PPTP link and the laptop also uses this as its default gateway. BTW: Counterpane found flaws in how MS implemented PPTP not PPTP itself so I'm happy with PPTP for the moment and I use a separate (non-easy) password for the PPTP tunnel.

    Wokflow is thus...powerup Laptop. Double-click Connect To Homelan (password is cached in dialog box on WinXP). Wait for handshacking and authentication and tunnel setup. Surf.

    My next move has to be IPSec with FreeS/WAN but ideally certificate based. So for me WiFi security is just not relevant anymore because it'll always be more flexible to place the crypto burden inside software as opposed to using hardware devices.

  19. One way of halting OSS community ! on Microsoft Researching Anti-Spam Technique · · Score: 1
    This is bloody ridiculous !. Typical of a company that has over 40 billion in the bank in cash. What they are trying to say is if we tax the senders then we'll stop spam. This would serously damange the OSS community which relies on mailing lists to communicate.

    Spammers generally hijack other peoples machines. There are very few static IP addressed spammers. Most spam I get is from US based ADSL lines - you can usually tell as there is a pattern in the reverse DNS name. Rest from China and similar.

    Fact is 95% of the 200 or so spams per day on my two main emails I get is stopped by Brightmail at my ISP. The remaining few that leak through are junked by Mozilla. Then of the stuff that gets through (say 2 per day) I pick 1 out of 10 which may be via subscribers that are from well known ISP like Yahoo or other major ISP and email back the abuse department asking why they permit spam to be sent to me from their subscribers.

    Come on Microsoft - why not have an excessive SMTP alert on your PC event monitor ?. Why not verify reverse DNS matches helo or domain of reply email ?. Why not have browser visit any links in background and check content against filters (imagine if every spam email cause an automatic hit of the bad web site then the spammers would NEVER be able to work out what was a human and what was automatic thus poisoning their live-email lists with false positives (obviously no need to visit a site if the domain of the SMTP server was the same as the reply email or the links ) ?

    We don't want 8000 spams we want NO SPAMs. Read our lips: NO MORE SPAM.

  20. Re:WTF? on Proper Disposal Of Old PCs? · · Score: 1
    Yup thats how it works. Basically the per-PC price is dirt cheap (less than a 10th of the retail/fully packaged price of the software) but it only includes UPGRADES to the OS thus any PC that you place on the MS Schools Agreement MUST include a fully licensed Windows OS if its to be used with MS software.

    In the end it means its very hard to remove Windows once you are stuck in the MS tarpit because every PC is liable and to get out of the Schools agreement then you would have to migrate many PCs because every PC that doesn't get migrated (e.g. admin system to run specialist admin packages) must have a Full license (retail/edu) product bought for it (which given the costs of Office and an OS every residual Windows PC would cancel out 5-10 times as many Linux/*BSD PCs.

    You don't get to be a multi-billion dollar company with 40 billion or so of spare cash which is still being accumulated even during a recession by being helpful or generous to poor inner-city schools !.

  21. Re:Give them to schools on Proper Disposal Of Old PCs? · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As the IT person at a local school I don't automatically accept any PC and I tell staff to not drop off PCs that they get given. Why ? Many reasons.

    Firstly software: Being On Microsoft Schools Agreement means that any PC will thus cost money each year in the per-PC fees EVEN IF ITS USED WITH LINUX/*BSD. Don't matter - as long as its a Pentium class PC its fee liable.

    Most PCs that are handed in are slow, maybe of a motherboard brand thats not well know (meaning company gone bust so no BIOS updates) or of a unusual processor e.g. Intel in a AMD site or vis versa of uses old EDO memory (which now costs a lot to replace) or ....and it goes on.

    Also the device has to be electrically tested (which costs money) and prepped with correct build (driver issues here) plus would usually have to have a optical mouse added (small kids and balled mice don't mix !) and usually a new (i.e. clean without coffee and food) keyboard. Sometimes the harddisk is just 1 Gig or so which was big a few years back but now doesn't fit our standard image (intended for 2.5 Gig or higher). We also get offered old 14 and 15 inch screens - waste of electricity and room now. I'm happy with 17inch or **flat** but not less than that.

    This all takes up valuable time. Now in 3rd world and LDCs time is cheaper than parts but in any first world country time is the expensive component and taking old PCs is a false economy.

    Now many companies are dumping PCs on schools: why because in the UK and EU PCs are deemed as hazardous waste and thus have expensive disposal costs. They see schools as a nice way of offloading dispoal costs. Yeh great thanks but no thanks - we have a room filled with old '386/P133s already ! Once you have one router/firewall/Nessus scanner PC then you don't need any more.

  22. Leather Yamani folio inside an OLD knapsack. on Recommendations For A Good Laptop Bag? · · Score: 1
    From first day I noticed Laptop bags had STEAL ME written in day-glo. So....

    I put my laptop (IBM R31) inside a _stylish_ black leather (Yamani) brief holder with all its accessories and I place this inside an well worn camping/walking daypack (knapsack).

    The folio is big enough for the IBM power supplies (which are flat) and for my Logitec (wired USB) optical mouse (never go to bank/trading customer sites with wireless stuff !) and LAN and Phone cables plus the removable CD/Floppy and odd software.

    The day/knapsack is old and worn but its a proper strong camping pack. This is doesn't look stealable but at the office out pops the nice black leather contents. On the street the whole lot looks like just any old used bag but its robust. Worked so far for 4 years that way with daily commute via metro/tube plus travel across Europe.

  23. SCO are "time bandits" on Linus Blasts SCO's Header Claims · · Score: 3, Insightful
    In project management you get people who are time thiefs /Time bandits. You know them; they say hi and 30 minutes later you end up forgetting what you were working on.

    SCO are now in this catagory or waste because they are screwing up Linus' valuable eating time. He shipped the 2.6.0 - we've all now built it and he needs his rest ready for the new year.

    SCO dispute is with IBM on subtle contract issues not Linus on what he wrote (non-thread-safely) 11 years ago !

  24. Re:Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT. on Looking Back At Windows Security In 2003 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Re: ACLS - OK yup ACLS are fine BUT wow can you really turn these into a nightmare with a few clicks. Worse still just pickup a system from the last person and try and see what fancy ACLs they tried to implement.

    ACLs are a powerful feature BUT really need to have very strict documentation defining whats been done in an organisation.

    The Orange Book evaluated standalone systems only. I like my Internet ! This C2 stuff is generally discussed as marketing aid and ignores the fine details of the underlying criteria. What is certified is not "Windows NT" but a very precise combination of hardware and software.

    The exclusion of Linux is because the whole program for evaluation requires a Vendor. There is no vendor for Linux. If anyone wants to get a TTAP Evaluation facility to do such an evaluation then why not the DoD themselves. The SELinux would be a good start plus the 2.6.X kernel capabilities and with the ACLs that are now part of Linux.

    Windows admins must also evaluate each report that comes out. With Linux (the kernel) there is just a single Linux repository - with a distrbution there is also a single repository (of that distro). Same as Windows.

    Configuring Windows security is also no mean feat either especially not in an AD environment. Lets face it both Linux and Windows can be made to be complex. The advantage that Linux has NOW is that Novell have bought SuSE. Novell has the best trust model of all. I imagine (well I hope) that some of the ease-of-use of Novell will be integrated into SuSE and then by default fall into Linux userspace routines. Fact is not much at a kernel level needs to now be changed on Linux. With 2.6 its fairly well ready to rock.

  25. Re:A good neighbour always burns late at night. on Dumpster-Diving for Your Identity · · Score: 1
    Thanks for that - Yup its certainly him - ta thanks !

    • http://www.arthurbrownmusic.com/
      • http://www.godofhellfire.co.uk/
      • Wow pre-8086/Z80 CPU era music !