Tag: Geek Stuff

Remember These People Make Regulations

I’m always harping on government interference in our every day lives. Lately I’ve been looking at peoples’ desire to get the government further involved in Internet regulations. Well I’ve already shown the United States government’s incompetence in selecting people to work on Internet regulations when they put Mr. Series of Tubes, Ted Stevens, in charge. Well the latest episode of No Agenda shows us that Britain isn’t any more competent at finding people to work on Internet regulations:

The Right Honourable Stephen Timms is the UK’s “Minister for Digital Britain.” He’s the guy behind the Digital Economy Bill, which makes the US DMCA look good by comparison. Seriously, this is some terrible, terrible lawmaking.

OK got that? Here’s his disqualifications:

Here’s what appears to be a letter the DigiMini sent to another MP, explaining why the Digital Economy Bill needs to go forward. It reads, in part, “Copyright owners are currently able to go on-line (sic), look for material to which they hold the copyright and identify unauthorised sources for that material. They can then seek to download a copy of that material and in so doing capture information about the source including the Intellectual Property (IP) address…”

Yup that’s right. Mr. Minister for Digital Britain himself believes IP in the term IP address stands for intelectual property not Internet protocol (which is actually is). Remember these are the kinds of people making decisions in government. Think about that for a good long time when you decide the government should get involved in regulating anything.

On iPhone OS 4.0

I’m sure almost everybody here has heard that Apple unveiled iPhone OS 4 yesterday. If you didn’t I’m surprised being it was “the news.” Anyways I’m here to give my initial and patented cynical overview of it.

All in all Apple claims to have added seven new major features. In reality I only give a shit about two of them. The first finally corrects one of my biggest gripes with the iPhone, lack of multi-tasking. Well it sort of fixes it. iPhone OS 4.0 finally introduced multi-tasking for third party applications. Let me rephrase it introduces a rudimentary form of multi-tasking for certain third party applications. Instead of doing like Palm and Google with their respective operating systems Apple has going the route of ancient Palm OS. Ancient Palm OS allowed some things to run in the background. They called it threading. The main two items that could be run in the background were open network connections and sound. This was accomplished by calling an operating system provided service. And that’s exactly what iPhone OS 4.0 does. It introduces seven services for running background tasks. My problem is the services appear to be very specific instead of generalized.

Like Palm OS of yesteryear the iPhone has a service for sound. It also provides a background service for location (GPS), a mechanism for applications to provide notifications when they’re not running, and a VoIP services (there are a few others but they’re mostly meaningless to me). There is no generic networking background service though. This means Skype can run in the background so you can take calls. But if you write an IRC client it will not be able to run in the background meaning you’ll get disconnected when you change to another applications (unless one of the mentioned services can be shoehorned into a generic networking services). That severely limits the application possibilities again. Apple proves yet again that they can offer a feature available in other operating systems for almost a decade while spinning it as something unique, new, and innovative. I’m not impressed but it’s certainly better than what they’ve had in the past (nothing).

The final note about multi-tasking is if you have an iPhone previous to the 3GS you won’t get it. Sorry Apple has decided previous models of the iPhone don’t have the required hardware even though jailbreakers have been multi-tasking on every iPhone model that has ever existed. It’s nice to know you’re loved right? Nothing makes me happier than companies denying features based entirely on the fact that they want you to buy a new product.

Let’s talk the other feature I took notice of, iAd. Apple has pretty much included adware directly into the OS (much to the bane of many like myself who avoid getting a system infected with adware). This is a feature that can be included in applications and allows easy advertisements. Apple controls the actual adds so the developer simply collects a paycheck from it (they get 60% while Apple keeps 40%). All in all I’m not as hysterical as many are about this feature. Currently many free applications already have advertisements in them so not much is changing. My main issue is since it’s easy to implement advertisements in an application more and more developers will be doing it (I had advertisements in my applications, if you want to make money just sell the damned thing). But my biggest fear is advertisements will start being included in pay applications (to offset the “subsidized price” of $1.99 of course). Not that big of an issue overall as you can just avoid applications with advertising in them.

The real problem with iAd in my opinion is how it makes the product feel cheapened. Let’s face it nobody likes adware getting onto their computer (as evident by applications like Adaware existing who’s sole purpose is to remove adware). So knowing an advertisement service exists inside of the operating system itself just makes the entire system feel chintzy. It’s a psychological thing but alas it’s what it is.

Overall iPhone OS 4.0 is an improvement but not nearly as good of one as I was hoping.

On The FCC Vs. Comcast Case

A while back the FCC brought down the hammer on Comcast telling the not-loved-by-anybody company they could not throttler or filter traffic. Well the courts decided that the FCC didn’t have that authority so Comcast is free to go back to their games again. This has been a major topic of discussion with geeks as of late because it pretty much rips the teeth right out of the idea of net neutrality. Or does it?

The Internet is an interesting creature. It’s predecessor was created during the Cold War as a mechanism to ensure the country didn’t have a single vulnerable point in it’s military communications network. The idea was to create a decentralized system that couldn’t be taken down by one or a handful of nuclear strikes, thus allow us to coordinate a counter-attack. Eventually this research lead to the public Internet that you’re using right now.

From the get go the government has been involved in the Internet. Likewise most of the major ISPs are companies that evolved from the breakup of Ma Bell which was a government sanctioned monopoly over all telecommunications in the country. Needless to say the entire system is infected with government interference. Until a short while ago the rules dictated to the ISPs was they had to allow all traffic to flow across their network without prejudice. This mean they could not throttle traffic crossing their lines that was emitted by or destined to another ISP. These ISPs also couldn’t throttle or filter traffic in any way. Now that this is no longer the case people have been clamoring for the government to enforce net neutrality again.

A lot of people are stating how scary it is to think about these companies have the power to filter traffic and how the only solution available to us is for the government to make laws that prevent this. You know what I find scarier? The government have more control over the Internet. Why? No current representative that I’m aware of has a background in technology, specifically networking. Likewise the government always managed to find the least qualified people to head committees and regulatory groups. Remember, “The Internet is a series of tubes” Ted Stevens from Alaska? Guess what. He was in charge of Internet regulation.

Do we really want people like this making laws that will regulate the Internet? I don’t. But I’m also a fan of net neutrality so what could possibly be done to ensure the Internet stays neutral while the government stays out of it? There are actually several options available.

In order to setup an ISP you need two items controlled by private entities. The first is a block of IP addresses while the second item is one or more domain names. Both of these are controlled by a private company called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). A potential option available would be for ICANN to require ISPs to agree to a series of rules that would in essence be net neutrality. If the ISPs won’t sign the agreement ICANN simply won’t allocate IP addresses or domain names. Simple. If an ISP really doesn’t want to play by these rules they can create their own Internet (you can create multiple global networks separated from one another thus having multiple Internets) and of course nobody will use them.

I’m not suggesting this saying it’s the right solution. This suggestion is being made as a potential mechanism of enforcing net neutrality while also keeping morons government out of the equation. But the idea of putting an entity who put Ted Stevens in a situation to made any regulations on the Internet is frightening.

On The Collateral Murder Video

I’m sure everybody has seen the video of the Apache helicopter crew shooting a group of civilians and two reporters. I wasn’t there so I’m no going to comment on the even itself, I’ll leave that to people who want to argue about that. But an interesting point is brought up by Bruce Schneier. The following was stated on the WikiLeak Twitter stream:

Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs.

Bruce’s question is simple:

Surely this isn’t NSA-level encryption. But what is it?

So WikiLeaks is saying the Collateral Murder video was encrypted upon receipt. They rented “super computer time” to break the video encryption. So what the Hell scheme was used to break the encryption? Although Wikipedia is far from a valid source of information I’m going to link to the article on AES encryption because it gives a good overview. Specifically this part:

The National Security Agency (NSA) reviewed all the AES finalists, including Rijndael, and stated that all of them were secure enough for US Government non-classified data. In June 2003, the US Government announced that AES may be used to protect classified information:

The design and strength of all key lengths of the AES algorithm (i.e., 128, 192 and 256) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the SECRET level. TOP SECRET information will require use of either the 192 or 256 key lengths. The implementation of AES in products intended to protect national security systems and/or information must be reviewed and certified by NSA prior to their acquisition and use.”[8]

So considering this video was classified it would most likely have been encrypted using AES. There are some attacks currently available against AES but none of them allow breaking in a reasonable amount of time (depending on the implementation of AES used of course). Of course there is the possibility that the video was encrypted using a poorly chosen key and the WikiLeaks people simply performed a brute force attack against the video. It would seem idiotic that somebody would both encrypting this video using a strong encryption algorithm but not both using a good key. Then again this is the government we’re talking about and they are known for incompetence.

I would like to hear from WikiLeaks what method was used to encrypted this video. It would be interesting to find out not only what algorithm was used but also if the video was encrypted by the military, other government personnel, or the person who leaked the video.

The iPad

Being a world renounced technology pundit… wait scratch that. Being a geek I get asked about various technological doodads and gizmos quite often. Since the iPad is the current hot tech device I’m getting asked my views on it. Because of my inflated ego and perceived self worth I’ve decided reads of this site (both of you) may be interested in my views on the device. So here it is.

First let me start by saying I don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch. Coincidentally I also don’t have an iPad therefore this post is going to be my views based upon the published specifications and my person beliefs as a computer scientist (note that’s the only credential I’m going to be using because I have no other credentials related to this). I do have the development tools for the iPhone installed on my computer and have written test applications for the platform and most of the time I view a platform based on my development experiences. I have played with physical iPhones but have yet to hold an iPad. There that’s straight up and honest. My opinions may change based on exposure to the physical device at a later date and if that is the case I’ll post my revised ides.

A final note is I’m basing this post on the iPad in its stock configuration. I realize that is has already been jail broken and thus additional functionality exists. I don’t like messing with such things and if I need to jail break a device to make it useful to me I generally just get a different device.

First and foremost I’m going to mention my gripes with the iPhone (the validity of which will be made clear in a few paragraphs). The biggest one for me is third party applications can’t multi-task. If you don’t know what that means it is a pseudo-fancy way of saying multiple third party applications can not run at the same time. So if you have an IRC client you can not allow it to run in the background while you open the Pandora application meaning you’ll miss any messages sent to you during your time outside of the application. This is a huge issue for my uses. I often have an AIM client (don’t laugh, it’s what the majority of my friends use), IRC client, and various other programs open and running at the same time on my laptop. Likewise on my phone I have ran my AIM client while doing other tasks (yes the old Palm OS had some limited multi-tasking capabilities including network connections continuing to run in the background). Not being able to get messages sent to me using these clients while I’m doing other things is a huge strike against the device.

Another issue I have with the iPhone is the fact you can only install applications Apple has blessed. Their process of blessing applications is fairly random and they haven’t published exact specifications stating what will and will not get approved. They have mentioned some things but other things they seem to make up on the spot. I don’t like a third party having this kind of control over a device I have purchased. If I want to install a shitty application that will break my phone I should damn well be able to do so.

Third the battery in the iPhone is not easily user replaceable. Yes Apple will replace the battery should it become weak at a nominal charge but that doesn’t do anything for me when the battery runs out of juice while I’m on a trip and I need to swap in a fresh one. I have a spare batter for my current phone specifically because of this scenario. I want the ability to swap batteries when the one in my phone is completely discharged after a long phone conversation. Likewise I’m a big fan of self-servicing my electronics. My the fan in my old laptop died I bought a new one and installed it myself. I could do this because the case could be opened easily while the iPhone isn’t built in a manner that allows easy service. It’s a disposable device, when it breaks you’re just expected to replace it. I hate this idea.

I also hate AT&T which is the only United States carrier who has the iPhone. This is a non-issue for the iPad so it’s irrelevant to this post though.

Those are the big ones. Beyond that I haven’t much against the iPhone. But that brings up the first issue I have with the iPad. It doesn’t correct any of these issues I have with the iPhone. The iPad doesn’t multi-task and any application you want to install must be blessed by Apple. Also like the iPhone the iPad battery is not user replaceable which just pisses me off.

With that said the iPad does have one option available to it that I like. You can sync up a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad giving you the ability to do actual typing on it. Combined with the size and portability of this device that means the iPad should be fairly proficient for writing tasks. This means you could theoretically bring an iPad in place of a laptop if you needed to write reports or blog posts. Of course the iPad lacks many tools (virtual machines and development tools mostly) I require for day to day tasks and hence would not be a laptop replacement for me. But that’s my uses and I don’t think most people require the same tools I do therefore the iPad is a potential laptop replacement. Most people outside of the computer science field I know would be able to function a week on the features available on the iPad.

Now the part I really like about the iPad, it’s simplistic interface. Once again this isn’t something for me personally but for people I know. The iPad would be the perfect computer for my grandmother. My grandmother knows nothing about computers. While trying to show her how to run one I noticed several things. First she always tries to touch the icons on a screen to open an application. She doesn’t get the interaction between the touch pad on a laptop and the pointer on a screen. A touch screen device would be perfect for her which is exactly what the iPad is. She doesn’t touch type, instead she has to hunt and peck for keys on a keyboard. Due to this she really gains no benefit from a physical keyboard since the main benefit is speed. An onscreen keyboard would be ideal for her uses (especially if you could sort the keys in alphabetical order instead of using the QWERTY layout). By default the iPad has a web browser which is pretty much all she needs or wants. She has no interest in third party applications at all. Of course a JooJoo would fit this use case well except for the fact it’s larger and heavier while my grandmother doesn’t have the best ability to hold a heavier device up for very long.

Overall I think the iPad is perfect for those wanting to use basic Internet functionality (web browsing, e-mail, etc.) but have no experience nor interest in computers beyond that. It’s simple and basic which is exactly what many people want.

As an e-reader I think the iPad suffers from the same flaws as any portable computer, the screen. The reason I love my Kindle is because the screen is something I can look at for hours on end and use outside in direct sunlight. Yes when the weather is nice I like to take my reading outside to places like my little deck or park benches. The iPad screen is highly reflective. Apple did that because it makes colors look much richer but it also comes at the price of being almost unusable outdoors. My laptop has a glossy screen as well and using it with any light source behind you can suck pretty hard. Finally the iPad is a bit on the large side for an e-reader in my opinion (I love the Kindle’s size, especially when I’m sitting on an airplane). Without an e-paper display I can’t imagine replacing my Kindle with an iPad. Of course somebody will bring up that I can’t view color illustrations on my Kindle to which my replay is, I don’t care. Truth be told through most of college I obtained international editions of my required text books. These are the same books you buy in campus book stores except they are not hard cover and they only have black and white illustrations. I never encountered an image or diagram in a book where I though, “Hey I wish this was in color.” And most of my reading involves novels and technical manuals which are mostly text and therefore don’t require color. If your main reading material are things like comic books I can see where having a device with a color screen is going to be a huge plus and in that case the iPad will fit the bill.

The iPad seems to also be a great portable movie player. The screen is large enough where you could watch a movie on it while still being small enough to have sitting out on an airplane or bus. If the screen is anything like the iPhone’s it’ll be plenty good for displaying good video. I think it’s too large to be an effective portable music player though. But most cell phones have this functionality built in. Having the larger screen the iPad offers is no benefit for playing music so most people will probably continue doing that on their phones (or MP3 player as in my case).

Overall I think the iPad is a great device for many use cases. None of them happen to be my use cases and therefore it doesn’t really fit me. The price seems to be in line with other similar devices although with how much more expensive it is than many netbooks in addition to have less features I’d say it’s not a good price point. For the most part my feeling towards the iPad is that it’s a solution in search of a problem. It’s too large to be as portable as a phone but tool limited to be a laptop replacement for many people.

I Think I Can Answer This

A difficult question has been put forth in regards to Apple’s recently released iPad (you may have heard about it):

Doing a little coding, we’ve discovered that iPad apps only have access to 256MB of RAM and the processor thinks it is a single core (probably ARM Cortex A8) processor.
…
So how does Apple get applications to run so fast? Thanks Thomas!

Considering the device can only run one third party application at a time I’d say you have your answer. If developers have gotten so bad that they can’t get their small application aimed at mobile devices to run on an single core processor with 256MB or RAM then they have failed as a developer. Seriously my old Palm PDA opened and ran applications instantly and it has a paltry 16 Mhz processor and 512KB of RAM which was split between storage and application use.

Fuck You Too Sony

If there’s one thing I love it’s technology and gizmos. Because of my bizarre drive to have lots of electronic devices around I ended up buying a PlayStation 3 quite some time back. The feature list of this system is quite long although it’s been getting shorter as the system ages. This is really odd since most systems gain features as they get older. Well one feature I rather enjoyed was the ability to install Linux on the system. Sure it ran in a hypervisor and was gimped for the most part but it gave me the ability to write code for the cell processor and see what made it tick. Well Sony decided to take that away from me as well.

The latest firmware update released today removes the “Install Other OS” feature and removes any currently installed operating system. Of course I would put this off as some kind of April Fool’s prank but information regarding this has been out for a couple of days. And it’s truly bad form to pull an April Fool’s prank before the actual date.

This kind of shit really pisses me off. I realize this is a feature used by very few people but those few of us who used it really enjoyed it. The fact of the matter is one of the reasons I bought a PS3 was for this particular feature as I wanted to play with the cell processor which was all the rave at the time. Yes I paid for this feature and now Sony has decided to take it. Well I could always refuse to install the new firmware but then I can’t use the system for the other reason I own it, gaming. So no matter what Sony is ensuring I lose a feature I paid for.

Well it’s nice to see Sony has decided they no longer want my money. But this is only one piece of my two part rant. That’s right you’re getting two rants for the price of one! The other thing that’s pissing me off are the comments being made by people. For instance user HumanNature on Engadget had this to say:

Totally agreed. I blame Geohot for this mess. No one with a working common sense would not foresee Sony not fixing their security issue with OtherOs. I mean really, did Geohot really think Sony was going to congratulate him and let some other hacker make it easy to install like the PSP? Geohot releasing the exploit is the cause, Sony locking the OtherOs is the effect.

Do people really expect Sony to sit around and let the PS3 end up like the PSP? Like many things in life, it only takes one idiot to abuse something, and everyone will be force to pay the price.

That’s right people are blaming the well known hardware hacker who goes by the handle Geohot. What did Geohot do? Well you can go read his blog. More or less he found a convoluted way to accomplish nothing… yet. But as with all hacks it will eventually lead to bigger and better things.

Either way what he did was awesome. It should be seen as an accomplishment as it required ingenuity and understanding of the hypervisor. It was a good hack and he should be congratulated for figuring it out not blamed for Sony removing the “Install Other OS” capability on the PS3. The bottom line is Sony decided to take their ball and go home instead of fixing the flaw. This is akin to somebody finding an exploit in Windows Media Player and Microsoft reacting by removing Windows Media Player (granted not a horrible thing but I’m bias in my hatred of Windows Media Player).

Either way there seems to be a lot of blame and some hatred going towards Geohot for playing with hardware he owns. That’s the key thing. You don’t rent a PS3, you purchase it. Once you own it you can do anything you want with it. If I want to take mine to the range and blast the shit out of it I very well can because it’s my property. Geohot did what any good geek does, he developed an understanding of the device and decided to utilize that understanding to make the device to more. But the bottom line is this attempt to extend the capabilities of the device have nothing to do with game piracy as Sony claims.

Of course very few people really care about this exploit because few people use the “Install Other OS” feature. So I say the next exploit should focus on the Blu-ray player which people actually use. After all if that gets hacked it could allow the ability to play pirated games and therefore, using Sony’s logic, the Blu-ray drive would have to be disabled. Then people would actually be pissed.

Oh and I’m going to close out by saying fuck you Sony.

Apparently Communism Prevailed

So I just learned something that probably everybody else already knew. There is a Unicode character for the old Soviet hammer and sickle. Note for some of you it may show up as a question mark or a box with numbers in it. That’s just poor Unicode support in action.

U+262D prints ☭ (size increased to show detail). Apparently communism prevailed.

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

I mentioned a few days ago that I’ve been reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez (Once again not an affiliate link) and that I would write up a review of it after I finished. Well I finished it so here’s your review.

Although this is listed under the science fiction section Daemon is more of a techno-thriller. Think Michael Crichton in that Mr. Suarez takes a technology concept and expands it into a story. In Mr. Suarez’s case he actually takes multiple technologies and uses them in this book. Fortunately he also provides information on the technologies he brings up on his website.

Before even rolling into the story I want to bring up one of my favorite parts about this book. Mr. Suarez is a computer consultant writing a book involving computers. That means most of the stuff in the book are technically correct (although not highly detailed in any manner) or plausible. There are a lot of malicious hackers in this book and it’s refreshing to actually read a book where the hacks they are performing are believable and no centered around navigation through a 3-dimensional space where they have to align virtual cubes together to create a computer virus that can break firewalls through some kind of techno-magic.

But enough about that let’s get on with the story. I’ll try to do this without any major spoilers but it’s going to be bloody difficult. Daemon follows a series of different people who are all connected by the same thing, the death of Mathew Sobol. Mr. Sobol was one of the greatest computer game programmers in the world (think John Carmack of id Software only smarter) and was the man who brainstormed several of the most popular computer games of his time. Until his death he headed CyberStorm Entertainment which was the most famous computer gaming company out there due to the aforementioned titles. Well in his death he left behind a little present, a daemon.

As you can guess a rather broad type of characters are presented. One of CyberStorm’s other programmers is killed and the local police force are brought in to investigate. Likewise the story also involves a few identity thieves, new reporters, and even a man spending time in prison. It’s a nice assortment of characters and all of them are given enough time in the book to flesh them out. That time is well spent since given the wide assortment of characters they are all interesting and actually do provide something to the story.

But back to the daemon. The little bugger was programmer to perform a large assortment of different tasks that it slowly executes throughout the book. In essence it reads online news articles and looks for key words that trigger it’s next event. For instance it was originally activated after reading Mr. Sobol’s obituary. I would like to expand on this but honestly the best part of the book is following the progress of what the daemon does and I really don’t want to spoil that part. Let’s just say the author does a good job of keeping it a mystery through the beginning of the book and when its purpose finally revealed the book gets very exciting.

I’ve mentioned before that one of the biggest things I look for in a book is pacing. I don’t like boring parts where nothing of consequence is happening. Daemon thankfully is well paced where each chapter advances the story. Nowhere in the book did I get bored and wish I could skip ahead. I do have to say though the ending is kind of abrupt but does make headway for its sequel Freedom (TM) (a review of which will be posted after I complete reading it).

I’m going to go into a little more detail here which may present itself as spoilers. If you don’t like to have any element of the story revealed stop reading here. I’ll try to keep the spoilers vague as to not reveal much about the story itself but you have been warned.

One of the concepts that begins to be explored in Daemon on the idea of a distributed society. What does that mean? Well it means it a society where there is no central authority and large centralized governments aren’t able to evolve fast enough to keep in pace with ever expanding technology. More or less it’s a libertarians dream come true. The book revolves around the ever expanding daemon. Due to its purpose the NSA, FBI, CIA, several private corporations, and even DARPA are brought in to investigate it. On the other hand various groups of geeks are working against the government entities’ purposes. As you can imagine the geeks use every technological trick in the book to accomplish their goals. They also do it in a decentralized manner which the government agencies find difficult to counteract. I don’t think I can expand on this any further without revealing key plot items though.

This is honestly a hard book to write much about because most of the good parts require revealing important story elements. The bottom line though is that it’s a damned good read. It’s interesting even for the non-geek although I wouldn’t hand this title to your grandmother as she’ll probably be in even more fear of computers. But if you have an interest in computers, a good story, and some ideas libertarians would love (although I’m in no way implying the author meant to include libertarian ideals, they just fit with what is happening in the book) grab this book.

Also for your big time geeks out there that will inevitably complain about the impossibility of the technology involved, shut up. It’s a work of fiction, read it as such.