Posts by happygeek

I thought the answer to this question was pretty straightforward, to be honest, in that a netbook was smaller, cheaper and less powerful than a notebook. That was until this press release about a couple of new Toshiba models arrived in my inbox which kind of muddies the water somewhat.

You see Toshiba has released a couple of what it is calling 'Mini Netbooks' into the mix. No problem, you probably think, so these are really tiny then. Indeed, you might imagine the Mini Netbook would have the form factor of one of the late but not at all lamented UMPC devices that the likes of Sony were telling us was the future before the future arrived without them.

But who would want a 6" screen netbook? And to be a 'mini' one has to believe that these new Toshiba devices must be smaller than the first wave of netbooks which, if my memory serves me well came replete with screens varying in size between 7" and 8.9" at the most. As people became more interested in the notion of a netbook, and more manufacturers entered the market, in order to differentiate themselves they started increasing the screen size to 10" and beyond.

The answer to 'who wants a netbook like that' could well be me. A 6" screen but still coming "packed with features" and "boasting an 11 hour battery life" the press release from reseller IT247 proudly boasts. After conceding that netbooks have …

It doesn't take a search genius to go and find plenty of reports of how Internet Explorer is, how can I put this nicely, not exactly the safest bet if you are looking for the most secure browsing experience. Quite apart from anything else it has the biggest market share and so the bad guys will naturally focus their attention on trying to hit the product with the largest number of users. Just because Microsoft appears to not make this too hard for them to accomplish is by the by.

There really can be no denying, on common sense grounds, that using one of the alternative browsers with a smaller market share and better track record of both being hit by and quickly dealing with vulnerabilities is going to be a more secure option. Not 100% safe online, nowhere near it in fact, but safer than if you are using the browser client of choice for the bad guy attention. Indeed, depending upon the metrics used you might not opt for Firefox or Safari, but that still leaves Opera and Chrome looking like more secure bets.

Well, I say no denying but that, of course, does not apply to politicians who can deny pretty much anything. Including, it would seem, any hint of Internet Explorer insecurity. In a parliamentary question asked in the House of Lords by Lord Avebury on the 26th January 2010, Her Majesty's Government were asked about any discussions …

OK, I think this thread has been left to fester long enough and unfortunately has developed a nasty racist overtone on both sides of the argument.

Thread closed.

Those of us who can remember when Internet access meant slow dial-up modems connecting via pay per minute service providers will also be all too familiar with the concept of the porn dialler. For the youngsters out there, these took advantage of the fact that most punters had no idea what number the modem was actually calling. Indeed, as long as it made some screeching noises that resulted in an Internet connection they didn't really care much either, it was just assumed that the magic box was doing what it is was built for. But the bad guys exploited the lack of technical know how and protective consumer legislation alike by redirecting connections via expensive long distance premium rate numbers, with the victim only discovering the scam when they got stung by a huge telephone bill. The redirection was most often instigated by the installation of a Trojan, and in turn the most common vector for getting people to download and install these was the emerging online sex site business. If you want to view our uncensored gallery of explicit images then download the free viewer application, and at the same time quietly install a Trojan to redirect calls away from your chosen ISP, the scam went. Unsurprisingly, these became known by the generic term of porn diallers.

And now, according to CA Security Advisor research engineer Dinesh Venkatesan it looks like the porn dialler is back.

Hang on though, who uses dial-up modems these days? …

In an interview with The Observer newspaper, Dr Ian Brown from the Oxford Internet Institute who is writing a report on anonymous datasets for the European Commission warns that "criminals could identify individuals through mobile phone data and use the information to track people's movements and find out when they are away from home". His concerns have been peaked, it would seem, by the problem of statistical de-anonymisation.

Statistical what? Well, there have been great advances (although that's not perhaps the right word) in the last couple of years when it comes to the re-identification of individuals whose anonymity is supposedly guaranteed through the use of anonymous datasets. The concept is a simple enough one, take a load of data and strip out the personally identifying information and you are left with great source material for statistical research without the privacy of the individuals whose data appears within it being compromised.

Except it would seem that it is now quite possible to do just that, compromising the privacy of those individuals by piecing together the information like a jigsaw using some frankly rather frightening de-anonymisation algorithms.

It's true to say that the notion of anonymous datasets would appear to have been well and truly smashed to pieces. The statistical de-anonymisation process used by one US-based research team, for example, enabled them to take a publicly available and supposedly anonymous list of the movie ratings of some half a million Netflix subscribers and match movie preferences …

I was just shown one application which the iPad is perfect for, but I'm not sure the fanboys will appreciate me saying it: all-in-one remote control. Seriously though, it does look good mocked up like that. I'm sure there will be no end of apps coming along to exploit the touch interface which will make us go 'wow' at some point. At this point, though, I'm still struggling to get past meh.

I'm not convinced they will sell millions of this one though, maybe iPad V2 or V3 which address the 'gripes' that I and many others have, but this particular model?

Will I buy one? Erm, despite all the failings, probably yes when the 3G model arrives :) After all I am something of a fanboy and an early adopter. Plus, for me, it's going to be all about the apps.

Re: point 11 - I am informed that GPS should make an appearance in the 3G version of the iPad when that finally arrives.

Er, yes I was very aware of that. It's called British humour :)

OK, so Apple has done it again. Whipped the technology and consumer media up into a feeding frenzy that is. But has it delivered with the truly magical and revolutionary product that was promised? Er, no dude, not by a long shot and here (in no particular order) are 15 reasons why the iPad is not a game-changer.

1. According to Steve Jobs the netbook concept has been a fail and the iPad does everything better. Apart, that is, from doing more than one thing at once. Users obviously won't want to have a Twitter app running on that large screen while they surf the web or check their email.
   
2. Still no Adobe Flash support, which makes the iPad about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to web browsing.
   
3. Despite the notion of an Apple iBookstore, the iPad is not a Kindle Killer for one very good reason: no e-ink. Yes, there's no doubting that Apple will position itself up towards the top of the eBook tree, but will consumers be happy to pay more for an iPad than a Kindle only to get a less pleasing reading experience?
   
4. The name is all wrong. It's too close to iPod, and it sounds too much like a sanitary protection product. Ask any woman what they think of the name iPad and they will either go bright red or start laughing. The name iPad is just wrong, period.
   
…

Back in 1992 a national newspaper interview referred to me as being the first virtual celebrity, which wasn't really true. Sure, I had managed to build something of a high profile in the emerging world of the Internet courtesy of my Wavey Davey persona and a disregard for the traditional convention. However, that profile was helped along by my also writing some of the first books about the Internet to be published in the UK, helping launch such well respected (even at the time) magazines as .Net and PC Pro, and perhaps more than anything plentiful appearances on TV and Radio. Fleeting 'celebrity' status thanks to being on the tube is nothing new and presenting first a music programme and then a technology one played its part in my very fleeting indeed brush with fame.

Today it's a different type of tube that is helping create a culture of celebrity, and one where the virtual or online only tag is much more apt: YouTube. Who could forget the rise, and fall, of Gary Brolsma the Numa Numa man or the Sneezing Baby Panda for example? But every now and then someone finds virtual fame through YouTube for something perhaps a little more deserving than an ability to be stupid or finding themselves being filmed during an unintentionally funny incident. Someone like Justin Sandercoe, perhaps the first real virtual celebrity worthy of the moniker. Sure, many of you might now be saying 'Justin Sanderwho?' …

OK then, just for fun, can you remember the very first thing that you posted on DaniWeb? Go on, tell us the when and what, even if it was really embarrassing :)

To start the ball rolling, mine was actually a news story called 802.11n puts the why into WiFi which I posted way back on the 2nd May 2006.

Tommy Gun - The Clash

Dear God - Avenged Sevenfold

I knew you wouldn't be able to stay away for too long! Welcome back Serkan.

Done

Looks like my hunch was right.

It was only ever going to be a matter of time, and it proved to be around 24 hours actually. It seems that the scammers have started exploiting the inevitable interest in the Johnny Depp RIP story by publishing links to what is said to be video footage of the death crash but in fact is just a malware loader. More information on this breaking development at IT Pro.

Just brewed up a big pot of Stokes of Lincoln 'poacher' coffee - which can mean only one thing: time to get working.

Where we belong - The Lostprophets

Actually, to nit-pick, it is the other way around: my avatar does not look like me whereas I look remarkably like my avatar.

I'm Ray Winston as well. Who's the Daddy?

Currently it's the army cap, soul patch and stubble look. Goes well with the 6'2" and 210lbs heavily tattooed frame.

Obviously I slim down a bit and CGI remove the full sleeves and backpiece for movie roles...

I'm now waiting for the first 'RIP Johnny Depp' malware link scam to hit, it's surely only a matter of time :(

I just wish she loved me for my great taste in hats and facial hair.

My wife is a fan of the Johnny Depp 'good parts' as well - but we had better not go there.

My secret is out. I am Johnny Depp. How did you know? :)

Actually I agree with you, and in my artcile I am not blaming the people who set the hoax off either back in 2004 or again now. It is the Twitter collective that is revealed to be broken, in my opinion. People are too eager to believe in order to belong, and to belong so that they can believe. Or something like that. Whatever, it shows that while Twitter can be a useful source of breaking news it can also be a conduit for Chinese Whispers and 'proper' news reporters are needed to separate the one from the other.

Just in case there are any Johnny Depp fans in the lounge, you might want to read our breaking news story here on DaniWeb about how the actor is NOT dead, despite what Twitter trends and many other early reports are saying.

We did a little research and revealed all.

No, it was about the Twitter collective psyche getting it wrong. It was about the way that trending topics on Twitter become fact, even if only for a relative fleeting moment. And that's important as the likes of Google and Bing etc buy into Twitting trending, as the big names of search add their weight to the 'value' of such trends.

When Twitter gets it right, it beats all the major news gathering organisations to the punch with the really big news. I heard about the Haiti earthquake first on Twitter, and it took a fair while for the traditional news networks to catch up. But what happens when Twitter gets it wrong?

Well you get silly rumours such as the death of Johnny Depp becoming the hottest trending topic, as has happened overnight. The trouble being, because Twitter is getting a reputation for breaking big stories so quickly, people are starting to believe whatever is trending. So when right at the top of the trending list is 'RIP Johnny Depp' and this links to thousands of tweets saying things like "OMG NOOOO, JOHNNY DEPP DIED???" and "Johnny Depp is really dead" which in turn link to a news story reporting the car crash which killed him, well, the thing takes on a momentum that is hard to slow down.

But the person who tweeted "Johnny Depp cannot be dead. No. Just no. I won't believe it until I see it properly" was right. You should treat Twitter as the Chinese Whispers of news, lots of reports that could be breaking a major news story but not the actual source of the story itself.

My wife is a woman so perhaps it should come as no great surprise that she fancies the pants off of Mr Depp and ordered me check it out when …

For a while it looked like the Google threat to pull out of China was just a load of hot air, and pretty late hot air at that considering it had taken years for the search giant to realise that state censorship is a bad thing. But that has all changed now that Google landed a well aimed kick right to the Chinese commercial nads by 'delaying' the launch of a couple of new Android OS powered mobile devices.

Although there is, as of yet, no official response from China over this latest move it has previously stated that Google should not be above the law and that any company wishing to do business in China has to respect and obey the laws of the land. I doubt that pulling the release of a couple of cellphones in a country awash with cellphones is really going to make China change its mind on this one.

Motorola and Samsung, the companies whose smartphones were ready to go on the country's second biggest mobile network, China Unicom, to the tune of some 30,000 handsets in all, might take a different view given the size of the market. Of course, given that there are some 700 million mobile phone users and growing, this kind of leaves Google between a rock and a hard place.

Does it really want to turn around and flounce out of an important, vital even, market …

I would like to think that anyone watching, reading or listening to news reports of the unfolding tragedy that is post-earthquake Haiti could not fail to be moved first to tears and then prompted to want to do something. Most people have responded by asking themselves 'what can I do to help?' and have found the answer to be to donate money to the likes of the Red Cross or similar which is organising a disaster emergency fund to help the poor folk of Haiti.

Some, though, have responded by asking 'how can I exploit the situation to satisfy my own greed?' and found the answer to be in generating poisoned search engine results and malware-laden spam. It almost beggars belief that anyone could sink so low, but the sad fact is that there is scum out there who will do anything for money and that includes attempting to profit off the misery of others.

Symantec is warning that there has been a "huge upturn" in 419 advance fee schemes, spam emails soliciting donations and poisoned search engine results designed to exploit the generosity of the masses.

The security company urges computer users to follow best practice to ensure donations and support reach the intended victims and not some scumbag scammers. Advice includes:

Avoid clicking on suspicious links in email or IM messages as these may be links to spoofed Web sites. Symantec security experts suggest typing Web addresses, such as those from a charitable organisation, …

A 'Microsoft Spokesperson' has just contacted me to say this in response to the Internet Explorer vulnerability news:

Microsoft is aware of public exploit code released that impacts customers using Internet Explorer 6 and of limited, targeted attacks attempting to use this vulnerability against Internet Explorer (IE) 6. As a result of the reports, we released an update to Security Advisory 979352 to alert customers and provide actionable guidance and tools to help with protections against exploit of this IE vulnerability:

Customers using Internet Explorer 8 are not affected by currently known attacks and exploits due to the improved security protections in IE8. To help protect our customers, we recommend that all customers immediately upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Customers should also consider applying the workarounds and mitigations provided in our Security Advisory such as putting Internet zone security settings to High.

Microsoft teams are continuing to work around the clock on an update and we will take appropriate action to protect customers when the update has met the quality bar for broad distribution. That may include releasing an out-of-cycle security update.

Errors corrected

So it seems that an Internet Explorer zero day vulnerability allowed the back door to be opened that resulted in the hack attack on Google and many others that has received such publicity this week.

According to McAfee it has identified an Internet Explorer vulnerability as being one of the attack vectors but the security vendor also warns that targeted attacks such as this often use "a cocktail of zero-day vulnerabilities combined with sophisticated social engineering scenarios" so it is possible, likely even, that other as yet unidentified attack vectors were also involved. However, McAfee dismisses some early reports which claimed that an Adobe Reader PDF vulnerability was a factor, stating that there is simply no evidence to suggest this to be the case.

Worryingly though, McAfee does insist that while "this attack is especially deadly on older systems that are running XP and Internet Explorer 6" and this was the focus of these recent attacks, Internet Explorer does remain "vulnerable on all of Microsoft’s most recent operating system releases, including Windows 7". McAfee says that new versions of Windows simply make exploiting the vulnerability harder, not impossible.

It becomes even more worrying when you appreciate that the code used in the Google attack to exploit the as yet unpatched vulnerability has now been published on the web for anyone to grab and make use of. Unlike some other news publications, DaniWeb will not be making things easier yet by linking …

If it is so concerned about the online rights of users, as the Google statement about pulling out of China would suggest, maybe it should consider pulling out of Italy next.

Unless of course the China crisis is more to do with commercial failure to dominate an emerging and important online market and less to do with censorship after all. As I may have mentioned before, it is nice to see Google taking a stand but a real shame that it has taken so long for the company to locate its backbone.

Now it has a chance to act a little quicker in Italy, where the Government plans to introduce new rules that will mean anyone wanting to upload video content to the Internet will have to obtain official authorisation from the Communications Ministry in advance. Apparently, and bewilderingly if you ask me, this move is being made to comply with an EU directive concerning product placement in TV broadcasts. Sounds more like a handy way for the Italian Government to restrict what those who disagree with them say online to me, after all it has made no bones about wanting to shut the online opposition up.

One opposition party spokesperson, Paolo Gentiloni of the Democratic Party, would seem to agree. Speaking at a press conference on the issue Gentiloni insisted that the ruling to require prior ministerial authorisation for web videos would be "an incredible limitation on the way the Internet currently functions". Another …

So just how many great ideas did you have last year? IBM managed to come up with 4895 during the course of 2009 that were good enough to be granted patents from the US Patent and Trademarks Office, cementing the Big Blue reputation as being King of the Patents. That eclipses the previous record breaking year of 2008 when IBM were granted 4186 of the things.

Amazingly this means that IBM has topped the US patents chart for 17 years now, and is showing no sign of slowing down when it comes to innovation and invention. Samsung finished second in the race and Microsoft third, but the numbers of patents just cannot touch Big Blue. Samsung managed to file 3828 successful patents, while Microsoft were successful with 2903.

Of course, while there is a serious side to all this I cannot help but wonder how many truly idiotic patents were granted in 2009 that cover technology. If anyone has any examples of stupid patents in this field I'd love to hear them, as long as they can take on the worst of 2008 which included Microsoft patenting Page Up Page Down and Amazon patenting the awarding of a virtual badge.

My favourite for 2009 so far would probably have to be Nintendo which has patented a bouncy cushion games controller.

Google has signalled, in the strongest possible manner, that it will be pulling out of China unless something is done to address censorship of searches. It has also accused China of launching a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on the Google corporate infrastructure, along with another twenty large companies from a range of business sectors in the US.

Such attacks are nothing new, just last year the Pentagon was allegedly subject to a successful hacking attack with details of the F35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter and the most expensive jet fighter ever, the target.

However, this time the worrying implication is that human beings were the target. Google says it has evidence to suggest that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists".

David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer at Google, say that the company has discovered that the accounts of dozens of users based in China, Europe and the US, who are advocates of human rights in China "appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers".

It is unusual for companies to go public with this kind of information, often for fear of damaging the brand or scaring users into thinking that security is not up to scratch, and that's without even mentioning …

Some might argue that it has been a bad year for encryption. After all, just as the last decade was ending came reports that the algorithm that is used to encrypt GSM mobile phone calls (as used by some 4 billion people around the world) had been cracked wide open. Now this has been followed by the announcement that 768-bit RSA encryption has been cracked. I'm inclined to think that this is a good thing, and am happy to explain why starting with GSM encryption.

The GSM Association responsible for developing the algorithm in the first place responded by stating that the work of the scientists behind the code cracking would be highly illegal in the UK and other countries. Well duh! Seriously though, there is an argument to suggest that it's better for the good guys to crack the code than the bad guys. After all, at least it is now known to be vulnerable and that should, as the guys who did the donkey work suggest, create pressure to produce a better encryption algorithm. Some argue that if they had not published the results of their work (which was apparently done after taking legal advice) then things might have been a little safer until such a time that this happens. Of course, the counter argument being that without the publication of such work the motivation to make changes is reduced considerably.

In many ways I think that this has probably done us a favour, …

Some 22,000 Acer Aspire Notebooks are being recalled because, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, they represent a burn hazard.

Mainly because they have the potential to melt.

Hot laptops are nothing new, of course, but generally speaking the seat of the fire risk is often to be found in the battery compartment. Not so with the Acer Aspire recall. Instead, according to the recall notice the "microphone cable may overheat when extreme pressure is applied repeatedly to the left palm rest" which can lead to the case becoming "deformed and the system may malfunction". In other words the microphone wire can short circuit and overheat.

Acer has apparently learned of three incidents of short circuiting which has resulted in the melting of the external notebook casings, none of which happened within the US and none of which caused injury. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is advising consumers that they should stop using these notebooks immediately unless otherwise instructed.

The affected units are Acer Aspire models AS3410, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG manufactured prior to September 15, 2009 and you can check to determine if yours needs to get sent back for repair/replacement by entering your unit details here.

We don't create new forums until the demand is proven - which means anyone suggesting such a thing needs to go and dig out a volume of recent threads to show us which support the claim that the forum is required in the first place.

Does anyone know just what is happening with Microsoft Windows Mobile devices? It would appear that many users with Windows Mobile powered mobile phones have been getting SMS text messages dated 2016. The first reports came as folk started to receive Happy New Year messages from family and friends on the 1st Jan 2010 and they noticed that those texts carried a date of 2016.

Could it be, as some have suggested, that 010110 is binary for 16 (unlikely, seeing as it is actually 22) or is it just a bug? All the evidence points at a bug, the WMY2K16 bug seems as good a name as any right now.

About the only thing that is known for sure at this point in time is that users of the T-Mobile network do not appear to be affected by the 2016 glitch and that, for those who are, an unofficial .CAB file fix is available.

So, what I'd love to know is: have you been getting text messages from 2016 on your Windows Mobile device? If so, what device, what network and what version of Windows Mobile is it? I would also love to know if anyone has any insight into exactly what is going on here.

Happy New Year from Yorkshire, England where it is 9.25am on the 2nd Jan. I think I might be a little late with this one :)

The hugely popular act of text messaging is many different things to many different people, from a cool way to keep in touch at one end of the spectrum to something that is destroying the English language at the other. You can use SMS to hack an iPhone or send sexy text messages in Scotland and risk ten years in prison. One thing that most people would not consider SMS to be, however, is a life saver.

OK, I can kind of see a scenario where someone has collapsed in their house and is unable to move so turns to the mobile phone to call for help. But even then, unless they were unable to talk as well I doubt that text messaging would be their saviour. Yet IBM, Novartis and Vodafone reckon they can use SMS to potentially save millions of lives in Africa.

The Roll Back Malaria Partnership 'SMS for Life' initiative is already helping to save lives using everyday technology to improve the availability of anti-malarial drugs in remote areas of Tanzania for example. And it is doing this by using a combination of mobile phones, SMS technologies and intuitive web sites to track and manage the supply of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) drugs and Quinine injectables, both of which are key to reducing the number of deaths from malaria.

Malaria is responsible for some one million deaths in Africa each and every year, mostly among …

OK, this thread is just a spam magnet now. Closed.

Yes, it seems to be left over from when the downvote bots hit us. Dani restored the overall scores, but I notice that individual posts still show the rigged downvote score.

Well, it is that time of year again and the holiday season is upon us. Which means I get to wish everyone the very best and say a very big thank you for being part of our community here at DaniWeb.

2009 has had some ups and downs (no mentioning the voting system or I will start bah humbugging) but overall I think it's been a pretty good year. With your continued support and feedback let's make 2010 an even better one.

Shouldn't this thread be called 'how to get your account banned on Reddit, and possibly your site as well' though?

Yes they were - if the 3G network connecting you to your iPhone data is down then it is most certainly an iPhone problem. See Sky News for just one of many, many reports of this very problem with iPhones and the O2 data network.

OK, it is very nearly Xmas now which means, if your household is anything like mine, lots of new tech toys to play with.

So I'm starting a thread where you can post both what you are hoping to get and then, after Santa has slid down your chimney with his bulging sack, some words about the best bit of tech kit you actually got.

I asked for a Pure Vl-61060 Sirocco 150 sound system and know I got it because I happened to answer the door when the delivery man dropped it off yesterday. A full review will follow in the DaniWeb Product Reviews section after Xmas when I've been allowed to open it! I'm looking forward to it, as it combines a DAB radio with an iPhone friendly (no beep-da-boop-de-boop-boop-boop noises when playing music) dock.

So come on, what about you?

No links to products though please, just discussion rather than spam :)