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Comment Re:Embedded systems devs (Score 1) 103

This is an approach to security that I forget the specific name I've seen it referred to with but basically it's analogized to certain tasty snacks. Hard candy shell, soft creamy filling.

If someone penetrates the defenses, if someone inadvertently or intentionally opens it up wider than originally intended, or if the attacker is an insider you're hosed.

If it can be connected to a network, you can almost guarantee that at some point someone is going to try to connect it to the internet somehow, and at that point any assumptions you've made about external or inherent physical defenses can go right out the window.

Comment Re:Here's one (Score 3, Informative) 237

Two words for you:

Google Voice

Not only does it give you great voicemail but you get the option of a second number on which you can filter and forward calls to your heart's content, plus free texting, and you can access it all from your computer, tablet, whatever. For the anti-Google crowd there are a number of other providers offering similar services, any VoIP provider is technically capable of doing it.

Carrier voicemail is a pile of crap across the board, I haven't used it since I got a smartphone.

Comment Re:Drama queen (Score 1) 196

No it won't. It only needs to be signed, not distributed on AMO. RTFA.

Extension files that aren’t hosted on AMO will have to be submitted to AMO for signing. Developers will need to create accounts and a listing for their extension, which will not be public. These files will go through an automated review process and sent back signed if all checks pass. If an add-on doesn’t pass the automated tests, the developer will have the option to request the add-on to be manually checked by our review team. A full review option will also be available for non-AMO add-ons, explained further ahead.

Comment Re:The new power supplies may be sensitve to EMP (Score 5, Informative) 192

That's because you're hearing the pulsed transmission of a TDMA radio technology.

D-AMPS (AT&T pre-Cingular), iDEN (Nextel), and any GSM 2G (up to EDGE) all use/used TDMA to share the frequency, so they're all potential causes of this.

These days you won't hear it much because D-AMPS and iDEN are both dead and most GSM phones will be attempting to connect on 3G UMTS (which uses CDMA) or 4G LTE (OFDMA).

DECT cordless phones are heavily derived from GSM so it's possible that they may be able to cause the same behavior, but due to their significantly reduced range requirements the power probably isn't there. I haven't heard it from my DECT phones.

Comment Re:Can they do it with corporate code? (Score 1) 220

Similarly I was thinking this would probably be defeated by a "minifier", obfuscator, or anything along those lines. There are dozens to choose from for most languages and it would be trivial for anyone attempting to remain anonymous to use them on their releases.

If you want the code to remain usable, there are tools to enforce a standard style instead, in which case just set it up with rules based on a popular project if your language of choice doesn't have a specific style. At that point you're down to comments and variable names. Don't get fancy with either and I'd bet the identifiability would go down significantly.

Comment Re:Selectavision (Score 1) 60

I actually have one of those. My grandma found it in her sister's attic when cleaning the place out and figured I'd like it. I thought it was a laserdisc player when she described it to me, so I was really surprised to find that it was actually a vinyl-based video format.

Video quality isn't much worse than '80s VHS.

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 570

So what happens when your hard drive goes? That's the "end of the lifetime of your device?"

No one can say for sure of course outside of Redmond, but if I had to guess I'd say it would work similarly to the existing Windows Activation schemes. A hard drive swap means basically nothing.

I had never had a reactivation required until just recently when I switched from AMD to Intel. Swapping between AMD processors and boards (Athlon X2 3800+ to Athlon 6000+ to Phenom X6 1045) didn't trigger it, nor did uncountable disk and addon board changes, but going to a Core i7 finally did it.

Comment Re:No (Score 2) 570

From the official Windows Blog: http://blogs.windows.com/blogg...

We announced that a free upgrade for Windows 10 will be made available to customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 who upgrade in the first year after launch.*

This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device – at no additional charge.

It sounds likely that there will be some kind of a subscription offered in the future, but those who use this upgrade offer are set for the lifetime of the device.

Comment Re:Ha (Score 1) 391

I remember a time when Sony was a maker of quality consumer electronics. They were usually more expensive than the competition, but usually better made as well. Then at some point in the '90s they sort of followed Bose down the path of compromising engineering and quality for marketing more and more while keeping their prices the same. Since the death of the CRT and Discman I can't think of a Sony product I've been able to comfortably recommend over its competition for it's primary purpose.

The PS2 and PS3 both had a time where they were a great choice if you wanted a player for their respective movie formats before the ultra-cheap players hit the market, but I'd never recommend either as a game console unless you are tied to the platform by exclusive games or more of your friends you want to play with having one.

Comment Re:huh? (Score 1) 300

I think the main reason supersonic passenger flights are unlikely to make a return is what you're using right now. The internet has eliminated a lot of the business cases where such things could actually be justified rather than just being a novelty/luxury. It used to actually matter that you could wake up in New York, have a meeting in London, and be back home in time for dinner. Now most situations that would have previously required such things can be done over a videoconference and a few emails.

Yeah there are still a few situations where getting a person or airplane-carryable thing across the ocean in three hours is worth the extra cost, but for the most part Concorde was down to the novelty by the 2000s. Those who cared about luxury would more likely be on a jumbo with the semiprivate or private seat/suite arrangements and those who cared about speed were making things happen digitally.

Comment Re:Wall Street Precedent (Score 1) 182

When a Wall Street program loses money for the owners, they eat it.

Not always...

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/0...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a040...

Not saying this is common, Knight provides a good example in the other direction and I honestly don't care enough about the markets to know of anything that didn't make national news, just that it seems it depends on the situation.

If I fuck up and code a program that goes out and buys or trades and buys illegal shit, then it's my fault for being stupid.

Legally of course this depends on the jurisdiction, IANAL. Morally I believe this is very grey area and depends primarily on intent. Obviously it's sort of hard to judge intent in most cases, though in this case unleashing it specifically on a "Dark Web" type site does imply at least some knowledge that it'll happen these days.

Then again I have to imagine part of the point of this exhibit was to counter that assumption, that all these sites are good for are illegal things.

By displaying them in such a conspicuous location also changes things compared to if one had tried to use "the computer did it" as an excuse when caught with the same things in their home.

Basically it's probably legally wrong, but I'd have a hard time being convinced that they should actually be punished for it.

Or let's put it this way, I code a program that looks for and downloads kiddie porn. Cops nab me and I just say, "Oopsie. The robot did it, not me!" So, I should get off...I mean let go?

Again depends on the context and the intent. If you wrote a bot that went out looking for anything it thinks is porn to display automatically in an art installation and it happened to come across kiddie porn, it'd certainly be illegal in a lot of jurisdictions. That said, due to the context of displaying the results of a search automatically as art I'd still be unconvinced that punishment is appropriate. The same excuse deployed by someone caught with a collection of images on their own machine should get laughed out of court and them right in to jail.

Comment Re:The wireless router is the bottleneck. (Score 1) 110

A PC Engines APU1C can "route" (NAT/gateway) around 6-700mbit/sec with pfSense on a 1GHz AMD A-series CPU with no hardware acceleration. That's nothing, hardware-wise. It has Realtek network cards which aren't great from a performance standpoint. I don't disagree that 10G+ service is going to take a fair bit of hardware compared to average home "router" hardware, but that's because those boxes are trash for the most part.

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