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Comment Re:Shocked. (Score 1) 851

by Vollernurd (#38469684) Attached to: Do You Really Need a Smart Phone?

Too many people are living the life that others expect of them, rather than the one they want.

Well said, sir. Well said. I for one deleted/suspended/hid my Facebook account for this reason. Never felt comfortable with it and have no regrets.

Submission + - Machines of Loving Grace (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Vollernurd
Vollernurd writes: The BBC has produced a fascinating series of films exploring the idea that humans have been colonised by the machines they have built, seeing everything in the world through the eyes of computers.

Like Adam Curtis's other works it can feel a little tinfoil hat at times but makes for wonderful philosophical television.

Available on iPlayer and so can probably be gotten at from outside the UK using the usual methods.
Sony

Submission + - History of Sony Breaches (attrition.org)

Submitted by Jellis55
Jellis55 writes: The attacks against Sony are not coordinated, nor are they advanced. Sony has demonstrated they have not implemented what any rational administrator or security professional would consider "the absolute basics". Storing millions of customer's personal details and passwords without using any form of encryption is reckless and ridiculous. Even security books from the '80s were adamant about encrypting passwords at the very least. Several of Sony's sites have been compromised as a result of basic SQL injection attacks, nothing elaborate or complex.
Books

Submission + - Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism? (larrysanger.org) 1

Submitted by
Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger writes: "Geeks are supposed to be, if anything, intellectual. But it recently occurred to me that a lot of Internet geeks and digerati have sounded many puzzlingly anti-intellectual notes over the past decade, and especially lately. The Peter Thiel-inspired claim that "college is a waste of time" is just the latest example. I have encountered (and argued against) five common opinions, widely held by geeks, that seem headed down a slippery slope. J'accuse: "at the bottom of the slippery slope, you seem to be opposed to knowledge wherever it occurs, in books, in experts, in institutions, even in your own mind." So, am I right? Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?"
Privacy

Submission + - Dragging telephone numbers into the Internet Age (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by azoblue
azoblue writes: E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here's how it works, and why it isn't already widely used.

Comment Re:Advert for the verizon network? (Score 1) 423

by Vollernurd (#29792791) Attached to: Verizon's Challenge To the iPhone Confirmed
I think you need to take more water with it. You said: "Verizon is also owned by Vodaphone, which has a much larger international market presence." The other guy said that Vodafone in fact own a 45% stake in Verizon Wireless (VZW). Vodafone Group DOES NOT own VZW. VZW is technically a joint venture. Vodafone networks globally use the GSM system. VZW uses CDMA-something. The two are incompatible. They are both, however, big and red. I like red. As Jack Carter once said, "You're a big man but you're out of shape. Now to me its a full-time job, so behave yourself".

Comment Re:We Already Knew "Hatred" Was a Lie (Score 1) 250

by Vollernurd (#29117819) Attached to: iPhone 3GS Is Number One In Japan

Not quite.

Phone to phone messaging in Japan is very popular, more so than voice use. However on the Japanese FOMA handsets the messaging is essentially SMTP, not GSM SMS/MMS. This is the way it's been since FOMA was introduced by DoCoMo back in c. 2000.

My sources, if yer interested: http://www.japaneselifestyle.com.au/culture/japanese_cell_phone_culture.html

Comment Not a cloned document (Score 2, Informative) 454

by Vollernurd (#28984319) Attached to: UK National ID Card Cloned In 12 Minutes

Whilst this is a failure of some rudimentary security system that was supposed to protect the data stored on the chip, this is anot a cloned card per se.

The chips on these ID cards, and the new UK passports, are there to enhance the integrity of the DOCUMENT, not be secure stand-alone identifiers alone. For instance you can easily copy the data on a chip once the security has been defeated but to accurately copy the paper part of the document including the watermarks, UV sensitive fibres, holograms, raised ink, irridescent coatings, etc. takes a lot of time and effort that most people won't bother with. Some do bother as a lot of bent banknotes will testify to.

These cards like the passports SHOULD when tested/checked be read by a human being who knows how to check the security features (e.g running your fingers over the top of a banknote to check the raised ink), check the details and the photo are correct and do not seem to have been tampered with, then they can check that the data on the chip matches the data printed on the paper/plastic. If they match then there's a very high chance that the card/passport is genuine.

Just checking one portion rather than the other defats the purpose of these designs.

Weak systems will always be exploitable. UK Border Control staff/Police/Home Office drones need to know that that no document is unforgeable and to maintain the integrity of a system requires knowledge and training on the part of those who are attempting to enforce it.

Comment Re:Coming to Cydia (Score 1, Redundant) 541

by Vollernurd (#28864447) Attached to: Apple Kills Google Voice Apps On the iPhone
Well put sir, well put. Constant nerd will-waving about what tickbox such-and-such device has over another (not just iPhone and suchlike) is as tiresome as it is pointless. Canada has mountains. So does the moon. The moon is bigger than Canada. Therefore the moon is a better place to live than Canada. (OK, well, I spent only some time in Calgary...)
Movies

Watchmen Watched 489

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-i-can dept.
In a blatant attempt to make my movie-going a valid business expense, I'm putting together some notes on Watchmen, and providing a place for you all to discuss it. The first thing I want to say is that I had high hopes: If you ask any serious comic book nerd what the most important book is, they will probably give you one of two answers, and "Watchmen" is the right one. So really Snyder, the director of 300, could only do wrong. Fortunately for me, he was very true to the book: just like 300, many sequences are shot-for-shot from the comics. Some stuff didn't make it, and the new ending has a different meaning to me (one that really isn't as satisfying, but is certainly cleaner). But what I can't say is if it was a good movie or not. I sorta wish I could get an impartial opinion of someone who isn't a nutty fan of the book to tell me how it stands as a movie. I imagine a bit slow, wordy and maybe a bit confusing in parts. I'll leave full reviews to others, but I enjoyed the picture and suspect you will too.
Patents

Rewriting a Software Product After Quitting a Job? 604

Posted by kdawson from the clean-room-white-coats dept.
hi_caramba_2008 writes "We are a bunch of good friends at a large software company. The product we work on is under-budgeted and over-hyped by the sales drones. The code quality sucks, and management keeps pulling in different direction. Discussing this among ourselves, we talked about leaving the company and rebuilding the code from scratch over a few months. We are not taking any code with us. We are not taking customer lists (we probably will aim at different customers anyway). The code architecture will also be different — hosted vs. stand-alone, different modules and APIs. But at the feature level, we will imitate this product. Can we be sued for IP infringement, theft, or whatever? Are workers allowed to imitate the product they were working on? We know we have to deal with the non-compete clause in our employment contracts, but in our state this clause has been very difficult to enforce. We are more concerned with other IP legal aspects."

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