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Comment: Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous (Score 1) 304

by mgoff (#41429387) Attached to: Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name

People who had their locker beside yours in high-school are not 'long lost friends'

Yes, they pretty much are, almost by definition, since they are/were friends who you lost touch with a long time ago.

they don't need to see photos of your cars and kids nor need they to know where you live.

Need? No, but maybe they want to. I know that I have really enjoyed seeing photos of friends from high school, their kids, whatever, and have had some fun exchanges catching up with people I hadn't spoken to in years. In my case, I grew up on military bases, so it was particularly easy to lose track of people, especially since this was pre-Internet. Just because circumstances caused me to lose touch with someone doesn't mean they should be permanently erased from my life. Just because I don't call someone on the phone every Sunday doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a quick browse of their photos, updates, whatever they post.

Listen, if you don't want to read or post to Facebook, fine. But you're being an arrogant ass to tell others they shouldn't. Not every interaction with people has to rise to the level of a discussion over the validity of Keynesian vs. Hayekian economics. Maybe I just want to see a cute pic of an old friend playing with his daughter from time to time.


Comment: Re:Sounds like BS (Score 1) 434

by mgoff (#41342677) Attached to: Intel Says Clover Trail Atom CPU Won't Work With Linux

Is there any source for this statement besides The Inquirer?


Interestingly, the Ars Technical piece in question doesn't directly quote anybody from Intel saying Clover Trail “cannot run Linux”, they just say that the Inquirer reported that an Intel spokesperson at the Intel Developer Forum made that statement.

That's not "Yes," that's "No." If Ars is referencing The Inquirer, then there is no other original source than The Inquirer. Given The Inquirer's reputation, I think it's pretty important that we get independent confirmation before rushing to get the torches and pitchforks ready (or rushing to defend Intel's rights, depending on your bent).

Comment: Doesn't Replace Dropbox (Score 1) 222

by mgoff (#35655372) Attached to: Amazon Releases Cloud-Based Music Service

I was a little disappointed to learn that this won't really complete with or replace Dropbox, at least not yet. For me, OS-integration is critical-- I've got plenty of places to store info via a manual interface (web, FTP, etc). Hopefully this is just a start, and we'll see more features soon. Frankly, Dropbox works perfectly for me, so this just adds competition to the space that will hopefully drive up free storage capacities.

Comment: Re:Welcome to 3 years ago (Score 1) 243

by mgoff (#30944010) Attached to: Why "Verified By Visa" System Is Insecure

This likely only happened because you were in the boondocks. We just moved back to the States from two years in London. It took forever to get a current account (checking) set up when we first moved to England, so we lived on our US Capital One card (no ForEx charges) for nearly a month. We were never once hassled for using a non CnP card-- everyone knew to swipe it. I don't recall ever having to give my post code the whole time I was there either.

On topic, I think CnP has to be more secure than swipe and keyboard pin as used for debit card transactions in the US. Seems like it would be trivial to skim the stripe data and the pin pads are not private at all.


Windows 7 Beta Released To Public After Delay 848

Posted by timothy
from the join-the-queue-or-ubuntu dept.
Z80xxc! writes "The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people proved to be interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers."

New Photos of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Assembly 122

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the this-is-sorta-like-lame-porn dept.
RobGoldsmith writes "New images are now available of SpaceX's Falcon 9 being assembled. The images are accompanied with a small update from SpaceX. If there are no unexpected delays, it's possible Falcon 9 will be completely integrated by the end of the year. This update shows real flight hardware and really brings the rocket alive. View images of the Falcon 9 nearing completion now!"

Windows 7 To Dial Down UAC 390

Posted by kdawson
from the cancel-or-allow dept.
Barence writes "Engineers working on Windows 7 have admitted Vista's User Account Control was too intrusive, and are promising to tone it down in the forthcoming Windows 7. 'We've heard loud and clear that you are frustrated,' says Microsoft engineer Ben Fathi. 'You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience.' According to Fathi, when Vista first launched, 775,312 unique applications were producing prompts — so some may be annoyed that it won't be scrapped entirely, but at least Microsoft is listening. The comments echo those of Steve Ballmer, who admitted at a conference in London that 'the biggest trade-off we made was sacrificing security for compatibility. I'm not sure the end-users really appreciated that trade-off.'"

Comment: Re:DKIM is a tool, not a solution (Score 1) 180

by mgoff (#22383998) Attached to: Domain Key Identified Mail vs Phishing

SpamCop/Blacklisting - This is actually very effective. I lookup the IP address of every email and check it against these databases. A failure has its session terminated immediately. The vast majority of the entries in these databases are from infected computers sending spam.

So here's something I've never understood: if zombies are such an issue, why aren't the ISPs taking action? It's their bandwidth being gobbled up too.

I would expect that network traffic from compromised machines would match some simple heuristics (high-speed, repeated http requests for DDOS, many non-local SMTP connections for outgoing spam, etc). If a machine trips the heuristics, knock the client off with an http redirect instructing them to contact support). Whitelists could keep online those few legitimate users who trigger the blocks.

This would probably never fly with commercial and high-end users, but I'm assuming Joe Sixpack (and Grandpa Sixpack) are the bigger problem. What am I missing? Or is this already happening?
