For all their great marketing Nokia have always been terrible at really making data over cellular work for users. They have mostly put their efforts in to trying to create a Microsoft style monopoly and to make it hard for other companies or individuals to make innovative mobile data services. Lets look at some of the horrible things they have inflicted on us:
GPRS which is a completely overengineered way of running data over GSM. Nokia's poor ideas implemented in GPRS have lead to its low throughput, excessive latancy and over complicated configuration.
WAP which was mostly driven by Nokia has cut mobiles off from the real WWW and created an unnecessary and largely useless new markup language. The kind of simplified HTML used in I-Mode is a much better solution.
A campaign to create a ".mobile" TLD which will mess-up the Internet address space by being completely redundant and badly overlapping with the existing domain usage. BTW they also propose that sites with a ".mobile" TLD MUST use the terrible mobile data protocols which they have been instrumental in defining.
I could go on, but I hope this has made the point!
WiMax isn't competing with Nextel's solution. To quote WiMax's own information page WiMax supports "fixed broadband wireless access systems"
The Nextel system supports fixed and mobile users. Radio systems that support mobile users have to be designed differently from those that only support fixed users. Mobility adds radio issues such as variable fading and doppler shift as well as the need to handover between different transmitters at the edge of cells. Fixed radio systems can't to any of this.
WiMax is competing with DSL and cable for broadband to stationary objects.
In fact low latency was a specific design objective of the Flarion solution that Nextel are using for this trial. The latency is much better than conventional 2G and 3G cellular systems so should avoid a lot of the problems with TCP performance which happens on must cellular data.
As the original poster said the consequences of latency are often overlooked.
Netgear's support web site contains the source for some of their routers (eg the DG834 series).
Cool idea for people to be able to add their own features.
Why does the press always uncritically report that DeCSS "cracks DVD copy protection codes"? It is clear that CSS is about preveting changes to region coding and the extraction of media. It doesn't prevent copying of the original DVD in any way, shape or form. As long as the DVD industry can sustain the spin that CSS is about copy protection they are winning the hearts and minds war.
How can we get the press to report these issues in a more intelligent way?
In a less well-publicized part of the company's licensing terms, announced Tuesday (August 5), SCO said it will charge OEMs $32 per unit for each embedded Linux device they own.
The $32 fee applies to any embedded system regardless of whether it is a Tivo set-top box which uses embedded Linux or some models of the Sharp Zaurus which also use that kernel.
My conclusion: SCO want's to get OEMs for embedded devices to pay $32. It was the EE Times that made up the example of Tivo as an embedded Linux device. I don't see any evidence that SCO is either going to target Tivo specifically, or chase end-users rather than manufacturers.
I can't believe the amount of milage this story has had. Yes the thing it technically illegal in the UK, as are all other devices that transmit at low power in the commercial FM band. As is pointed out elsewhere the law goes back years and years. However that doesn't mean that you can't but these devices, or that lots of them aren't already in use with no problems.
No, nobody is going to bother to enforce the law. It it doesn't cause a problem who cares? It is a complete non-story.
Like the ability of Freemen of London to heard sheep (or not) over London Bridge lots of laws lie around long after the environment they related to has changed out of all recognition.
I am sure I am not the only one to spot the mistake.
The QWERTY keyboard was not designed to "slow typing down", buy rather to reduce the number of jams in a much more elegant way. It avoids having frequent adjacent letter pairs activating levers that are close to each other on the typewriters mechanism. This means that jams (which occur between adjacent levers) occur less frequently when typing FAST!
Humm - two cases being brought against "John Doe" in the United Kingdom (see here). What are the chances this is a real person? Hope they have better contact information that just "John Doe - United Kingdom".
If you bothed to read the CAA report you would find this in the summary:
The following anomalies were seen at interference levels above 30 volts/metre, a level that
can be produced by a cellphone operating at maximum power and located 30cms from the
victim equipment or its wiring harness.
â Compass froze or overshot actual magnetic bearing.
â Instability of indicators.
â Digital VOR navigation bearing display errors up to 5 degrees.
â VOR navigation To/From indicator reversal.
â VOR and ILS course deviation indicator errors with and without a failure flag.
â Reduced sensitivity of the ILS Localiser receiver.
â Background noise on audio outputs.
As for you second point - its clear that 99.99% of the time mobiles don't cause problems. Its just the 0.001% that remains you need to worry.
In another report on this I read (only in print form) it was pointed out that a lot of commercial aircaft avionics are just under the floor at the front of the passenger cabin. Therefore a phone in a bag under someones seat could certainly be within a foot or two of the avionics.
As someone who's worked on specifying the GSM standard since the early 90s (if not quite the 80s) I can shed some light on this, and why its a non-story.
The scenario is one where GSM operators use 802.11 to provide data-infill on their GSM networks, and reuse the GSM authentication mechanism over 802.11 to control access. The article is correct to point out that it would be relatively easy for someone to setup an 802.11 access point which pretends to belong to a GSM operator and requests GSM authentication information from connecting devices.
However, this shouldn't be too big a problem. The GSM authentication mechanism is based on a shared secret key which is written in to the SIM card in a way that SHOULD be read-only. Once its written the key is used by the SIM to calculate a response to a challenge sent from the network. This authentication algorithm is chosen by the network operator, and should be a one way function (ie you can't analyse the challenge/responses to get the secret key). Therefore, the hacker with a false network could get a set of valid responses to a set of challenges, but if the authentication algorithm is correct he can't use this data to get the secret key and clone the SIM.
The only comment I would make is that flaws have been discovered in the authentication algorithms used by some networks which potentially makes it possible to find the secret key if you have enough challenge/response data. However these algorithms are being replaced, and the computation is still quite heavy.
To summarise: fake networks attacks aren't new. Using 802.11 just makes it easier. Its best to suppress fake networks by mutual autentication, but even if you don't do this it should still be impossible for the fake network to get enough data to clone a mobile. The main problem with fake networks is that they can intercept the content of communications very easily.
Pedantic explanation of Scrapheap/Junkyard
on
Junkyard Wars Wants You!
·
· Score: 5, Informative
To clarify all this: There are basically two programmes:
Scrapheap Challenge (mostly UK teams made for UK TV), and
Junkyard Wars (mostly US teams made for US TV)
Just to confuse things though, when Discovery Channel in Europe shows the programmes the use Scrapheap Challenge as the title regardless of which version the programme originally came from.
Both SHC and JW are filmed in the same place. Last series this was in the US. This series its moved back to the UK. As you say, "foreign" rubbish is imported if necessary to make people feel at home.
I tend to agree. In the UK (where I am) the regulators actually did prevent use of 802.11b spectrum for commercial service. Unfortunately this rule was recently changed under pressure from the telcos.
Of course, the assumption that the goverment automatically owns all spectrum, and can "lease" it to other people might be regarded as highly debateable in some quarters anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
- GPRS which is a completely overengineered way of running data over GSM. Nokia's poor ideas implemented in GPRS have lead to its low throughput, excessive latancy and over complicated configuration.
- WAP which was mostly driven by Nokia has cut mobiles off from the real WWW and created an unnecessary and largely useless new markup language. The kind of simplified HTML used in I-Mode is a much better solution.
- A campaign to create a ".mobile" TLD which will mess-up the Internet address space by being completely redundant and badly overlapping with the existing domain usage. BTW they also propose that sites with a ".mobile" TLD MUST use the terrible mobile data protocols which they have been instrumental in defining.
I could go on, but I hope this has made the point!The Nextel system supports fixed and mobile users. Radio systems that support mobile users have to be designed differently from those that only support fixed users. Mobility adds radio issues such as variable fading and doppler shift as well as the need to handover between different transmitters at the edge of cells. Fixed radio systems can't to any of this.
WiMax is competing with DSL and cable for broadband to stationary objects.
In fact low latency was a specific design objective of the Flarion solution that Nextel are using for this trial. The latency is much better than conventional 2G and 3G cellular systems so should avoid a lot of the problems with TCP performance which happens on must cellular data. As the original poster said the consequences of latency are often overlooked.
Netgear's support web site contains the source for some of their routers (eg the DG834 series). Cool idea for people to be able to add their own features.
Go on - admit it, say the words "In this case M$ were R I G H T according to the standard!". Wasn't so bad was it?
The court upheld an earlier verdict that Jon Johansen, 20, had not broken the law by creating a system that could get around copy protection on DVDs.
Why does the press always uncritically report that DeCSS "cracks DVD copy protection codes"? It is clear that CSS is about preveting changes to region coding and the extraction of media. It doesn't prevent copying of the original DVD in any way, shape or form. As long as the DVD industry can sustain the spin that CSS is about copy protection they are winning the hearts and minds war.
How can we get the press to report these issues in a more intelligent way?
Humm, $500,000 to hide the holes in your software by discouraging virus writers. Cheaper than fixing all the bugs I suppose.
The point surly is that if a law is so draconian that people don't want it applied, then its time to change the law!
By all means make redistribution of copyright works illegal, but make the punishment fit the crime too.
In a less well-publicized part of the company's licensing terms, announced Tuesday (August 5), SCO said it will charge OEMs $32 per unit for each embedded Linux device they own.
The $32 fee applies to any embedded system regardless of whether it is a Tivo set-top box which uses embedded Linux or some models of the Sharp Zaurus which also use that kernel.
My conclusion: SCO want's to get OEMs for embedded devices to pay $32. It was the EE Times that made up the example of Tivo as an embedded Linux device. I don't see any evidence that SCO is either going to target Tivo specifically, or chase end-users rather than manufacturers.
Interestingly the HP Calculator Museum has some information and software from an unreleased HP Calc which runs on pocketPC. An HP Calc on your PPC?
...not something that will ever catch on in the US.
No, nobody is going to bother to enforce the law. It it doesn't cause a problem who cares? It is a complete non-story.
Like the ability of Freemen of London to heard sheep (or not) over London Bridge lots of laws lie around long after the environment they related to has changed out of all recognition.
The QWERTY keyboard was not designed to "slow typing down", buy rather to reduce the number of jams in a much more elegant way. It avoids having frequent adjacent letter pairs activating levers that are close to each other on the typewriters mechanism. This means that jams (which occur between adjacent levers) occur less frequently when typing FAST!
Humm - two cases being brought against "John Doe" in the United Kingdom (see here). What are the chances this is a real person? Hope they have better contact information that just "John Doe - United Kingdom".
If you bothed to read the CAA report you would find this in the summary: The following anomalies were seen at interference levels above 30 volts/metre, a level that can be produced by a cellphone operating at maximum power and located 30cms from the victim equipment or its wiring harness. â Compass froze or overshot actual magnetic bearing. â Instability of indicators. â Digital VOR navigation bearing display errors up to 5 degrees. â VOR navigation To/From indicator reversal. â VOR and ILS course deviation indicator errors with and without a failure flag. â Reduced sensitivity of the ILS Localiser receiver. â Background noise on audio outputs. As for you second point - its clear that 99.99% of the time mobiles don't cause problems. Its just the 0.001% that remains you need to worry.
In another report on this I read (only in print form) it was pointed out that a lot of commercial aircaft avionics are just under the floor at the front of the passenger cabin. Therefore a phone in a bag under someones seat could certainly be within a foot or two of the avionics.
All together now .... "its a dupe"
I hope that all the people saying "serves them right" have the same attitude to this practice.
The scenario is one where GSM operators use 802.11 to provide data-infill on their GSM networks, and reuse the GSM authentication mechanism over 802.11 to control access. The article is correct to point out that it would be relatively easy for someone to setup an 802.11 access point which pretends to belong to a GSM operator and requests GSM authentication information from connecting devices.
However, this shouldn't be too big a problem. The GSM authentication mechanism is based on a shared secret key which is written in to the SIM card in a way that SHOULD be read-only. Once its written the key is used by the SIM to calculate a response to a challenge sent from the network. This authentication algorithm is chosen by the network operator, and should be a one way function (ie you can't analyse the challenge/responses to get the secret key). Therefore, the hacker with a false network could get a set of valid responses to a set of challenges, but if the authentication algorithm is correct he can't use this data to get the secret key and clone the SIM.
The only comment I would make is that flaws have been discovered in the authentication algorithms used by some networks which potentially makes it possible to find the secret key if you have enough challenge/response data. However these algorithms are being replaced, and the computation is still quite heavy.
To summarise: fake networks attacks aren't new. Using 802.11 just makes it easier. Its best to suppress fake networks by mutual autentication, but even if you don't do this it should still be impossible for the fake network to get enough data to clone a mobile. The main problem with fake networks is that they can intercept the content of communications very easily.
There are basically two programmes:
Just to confuse things though, when Discovery Channel in Europe shows the programmes the use Scrapheap Challenge as the title regardless of which version the programme originally came from.
Both SHC and JW are filmed in the same place. Last series this was in the US. This series its moved back to the UK. As you say, "foreign" rubbish is imported if necessary to make people feel at home.
Am I the saddest man on
I agree - this is news if a major phone vendor is abandoning Symbian. Especially if they are one of the Symbian founders and own 20% of Symbian!
Damn I was going to say that! Oh well, dupes are the new black.
I tend to agree. In the UK (where I am) the regulators actually did prevent use of 802.11b spectrum for commercial service. Unfortunately this rule was recently changed under pressure from the telcos.
Of course, the assumption that the goverment automatically owns all spectrum, and can "lease" it to other people might be regarded as highly debateable in some quarters anyway.
Trust the slashdotters to think that not washing is a good thing :-)
Personally I like taking a shower in the morning.