BBC Blog Network

User Profile

badger_fruit

Listed below are comments made by badger_fruit between Sunday, 8th November 2009 and Monday, 23rd November 2009.

«Newer
Older»

Hi-tech hacks 6:57pm on 23 Nov 2009 ok, ok, point taken and apologies for hi-jacking the thread and wandering (by miles) off topic. Clearly, I'm not very pleased about a tech correspondent who writes that they will produce a follow-up piece but then does not deliver but this was the wrong place for it.

I'd also like to quickly add an apology, I am sure that he's a very busy man doing whatever it is he does but it would be nice to see a more balanced view.

I agree somewhat that the blog is more personal than an article, again, apologies for the (my) confusion.

I mean no harm or offence to anyone here or the blog writers.

As for my thoughts ON TOPIC ... well, one would think that as with anything,it's best to stick with what you're good at. I don't use or never have (and probably never will) Twitter to reach the "youth", it was suggested as a method of communication at my work but dismissed as our clients are unlikely to use it.

There's a big difference between a professional writer and a guy in their back-room - ultimately though the guy in the back room is more likely to say things the pro would not.

Where does the future lie for reporting? Well, who knows, in times of crisis, I'd respect more the cameraman/reporter who drops their tools and helps those in need instead of recording it for their next wage packet.

(There, is that better?)
Hi-tech hacks 4:53pm on 23 Nov 2009 "Get over it as making cry baby statements back at Rory makes Ubuntu users look like a joke when they can't get there way."

1. It's "their", not "there".
2. Wow, I didn't realise I represented all the Ubuntu users; even stranger when you consider the fact that I don't even use Ubuntu.

Anyway, you're right I am annoyed; it was promised but never delivered.

Not only that but I really don't think that he's the right guy for that particular task ... given he seemed to dismiss it without really using it.

I'm not the one writing statements such as from his blog as quoted "They research the story, get behind the obvious and seek to deliver a context outside personal prejudice" ... the Ubuntu blog stank of personal prejedice; he never "got behind" the story either - his face said it all on the photo of him looking afraid.

Do you work for the BBC?
How can you be so sure there won't be a follow up?
If you do work for the Beeb, that's a very unprofessional response to a reader's concerns!

As for all the OSes borrowing from each other, I never said they didn't but to go in detail on the main tech pages about the "amazing new features" of Windows 7 and the new Mac OS, it is only fair they should write the same articles for Linux distributions.
Hi-tech hacks 3:10pm on 23 Nov 2009 Post #2
"Good journalists bring critical balance. They research the story, get behind the obvious and seek to deliver a context outside personal prejudice"

That sums up nicely what Rory unfortunately is not.

Where is the Ubuntu follow up? are the stories on the two big linux distro releases Fedora 12 and OpenSuse 11.2????

"BBC's technology correspondent" - sorry, you fail.
I recall a while ago, you (or Maggie) asking what sort of things we'd like to see covered and that you're not wishing to turn it into a geek-fest but you rave over MS's new touch-screen and other features they stole from other OSes, you rave about Macs but where is the detail Linux fans crave?

LIP SERVICE.

Terrible.
Microsoft and Murdoch: Teaming up to bash Google? 12:23pm on 23 Nov 2009 Seems all "news" these days is just dramatised to the max just to sell papers (or now subscriptions online). What happened to "no news is good news"?
The Digital Economy Bill - does it add up? 12:00pm on 23 Nov 2009 To post 24 (thanks for taking the time to read through my Sunday ramblings!); I quote "I read the other day that having an unsecured wireless link may not be a good defence as it is the line owner's responsibility to make sure that wireless broadcast equipment attached to it is secure."

This is true; the WLAN is your responsibility to secure; indeed, most are now-a-days off the shelf BUT websites like remote-exploit.org provide tools and documents on how to crack the most employed WPA and WEP security used by most users/WLANs.

In the past few days alone, I have managed to break the three "secure" WLANs around my house and successfully been browsing various websites and resources using their WIFI. Nothing dodgy I must add, but the tools are there in the wild and no amount of legislation can un-do this.

So poor Joe, he's taken all the precautions he can - not being computer literate, he's just using a local firewall (windows firewall for example), but that only applies to that PC that it's running on and not other computers in the network.

The ISP can see using traffic shaping, who is using what but things like the TorProject.org have software free to download which routes HTTP traffic through other TOR servers - the ISP has no idea what's going on as the user's not connecting directly to these torrent sites and their P2P traffic is already encrypted so the ISP does not stand a chance!

As has been said previously, the metting between Geffen and Mandy seem to have produced this by the back door - what makes it worse is that Mandleson's been DISGRACED not once, but TWICE and yet he is back and seems to have even more power than ever, seriously, what gives?!
The Digital Economy Bill - does it add up? 12:55pm on 22 Nov 2009 Good afternoon all.
I tried to stay quite on these boards because I am annoyed at the lack of follow-up on the Ubuntu 9.10 review that was promised by Rory weeks ago (and the lack of coverage of OpenSuse 11.2 and Fedora 12 releases) but I am compelled to post as this is a topic which I feel strongly about. Here goes:

Post #20 raises a very good point - something I have said repeatedly until I am blue in the face - NOT ALL FILES SHARED VIA P2P ARE ILLEGAL!!! Yet this bill seems to assume (remember, ASSUME = ASS out of U and ME) that all P2P traffic IS illegal (or unlawful, or whatever it really is, I will go with unlawful here for argument's sake). To determine if a file that is being shared is being shared unlawfully, the ISP must

- Inspect the current packet of data and match with the other packets until a full file is created (as I am sure you're aware as a tech correspondent P2P allows the sharing of multiple files at a time, each file comes from or is uploaded to a different source/target in chunks as opposed to full pieces) - this is also presuming the traffic is not encrypted of course, as then, they have to break that encryption to get to the payload
- Compare the file that's been shared with a list of current files, determined to be "unlawful" to share

... before then taking action, be that sending letters out or using the "nuclear option" of disconnecting or suspending the (possibly compromised) IP or MAC address from their network.

OK, so, apart from the storage that will be needed and the fact they could be intercepting perfectly legal ordinary files (eg a 4GB linux ISO image) and obtaining private data. If someone grabs a torrent of say "lost" I know there are many sources, so it's not always going to come down as "lost series 4 episode 4.avi", it could be part of a passworded RAR file or the full AVI file, or MPEG, or VOB, or just renamed to MP3 so when the computer that inspects the final file as a whole tries to read it, it will say "not a valid file" and ignore it. The end user of course, will know to re-name to .AVI or whatever.

OK, so the ISP has managed to find 3 petabytes to store the world's P2P traffic, the next problem is "how do they know the content being shared is breaking copyright"?

I am sure if it's something to do with our government, will involve a giant database of some description. So then, the ISP then queries the DB for the file just downloaded "lost - series 4, episode 4.avi" - was there a match? OK, so perhaps not, the insertion of a comma between series and episode made it fail the match. So a wildcard search is performed, how does it know what to look for - each word being a keyword?! So everything then that matches "lost" or "episode" or "series" is returned. OK, that's 20 million or so results - can you imagine how much processing power the query alone will need and the DB being govt written (as with ANY database) will be prone to errors and omissions. After all, a human must be involved at some point.

What's the difference between me recording on my Myth TV box a programme and me downloading via P2p the same programme? Myth may have screwed up the recording somehow (disk error for example) - I'm not going to spend £30 on a series from a shop just for one missed episode! Sure, a lot have "catch up" and "on demand" but not every episode of every show is available. Not to mention, the infrastructure behind all this must be creaking as it is, to ask another 7m (estimated) downloaders to suddenly stop using P2p and use on-demand services, BOOM goes the service or the network.

Ok, so the ISP has stored the download, compared it to the entry in the DB, it looks at the IP address of the connection and sends them a letter saying "stop that please". I move on now to the next POF. Talk-talk's recent hijack experiment is a great example of how people's wifi can be piggy-backed without their knowledge. The downloader then just moves on and finds someone else's unsecure connection to use - Joe Bloggs then has to prove somehow he hasn't done anything. Guilty until proven innocent - after all, the ISP has all the evidence. However, their evidence is flawed so can not be used in a court of law should Joe dispute this (presuming the other point of due process is followed and not just bypassed totally) - as others mentioned, IP spoofing and proxying can be used to disguise the real downloader.

OK, so this would mean that Joe's PC would be confiscated while digital forensics went through to search for traces of the files. That would expose EVERYTHING that's EVER been on that HDD - even after being formatted, every website he's visited (ever) and every cookie, including bank details, private information and so on. Let's not forget, this guy is innocent.

To the chap who said the "PC owner is either too lazy or too stupid to take even the most basic precautions against viruses, botnets et al then they should have their PC confiscated and crushed."

OK, so that must include billions of users around the world who don't care about how their PC works, they only use it for MSN or Facebook or whatever and don't KNOW about how to truly secure a PC. Narrow minded statement my friend, think before you post next time please. Not everyone will be as adept with computers as you might want them to be. (This is partly thanks to MS - dumbing down PCs and wanting one of each desktop in the world).

Anyway, back O/T...

So poor Joe, his PC is being forensically examined, his internet cut off - what must the neighbours be thinking when a police transit and forensic team show up at his home and confiscate his computer equipment?

All that, because someone didn't want to pay a tenner for a "greatest hits" album that they've probably already got (don't forget that our current system says you're a criminal for making your own compilations)?

Oh and meanwhile, the real pirate is already a million miles away using another un-secured network to do his bidding.

You can not stop file-sharing (see Napster's history and where we are now), embrace it - stop pumping out clone after clone after clone (see x-factor - don't you think that the essex girl is very much a Leona clone, and that wally, Olly is a Will young clone?) and wondering why people are not buying music - BECAUSE IT'S AWFUL!

Free music, more people listen, more people like, more people go see them in concert where they are happy to pay for the experience (although not at the inflated prices being asked JUST TO KEEP THE RECORD COMPANY'S POCKETS FAT!)

I see that after all this time, home taping did not kill music.
Oh and as for the guys who have said that the Gvt are ignoring sound technical advice from people in the know to go along with their own policies - so true - just look at the cannabis farce not so long back.

I leave now but before I go I say to the people, stop buying music. Show the corporations where the real power lies - with each and every one of us - TOGETHER we can fight the real menace to society.
Facebook v Ceop 4:32pm on 19 Nov 2009 OK, it's the responsibility of parents to supervise their children on facebook et al. Until the child reaches 18 then they are legally and adult. I can't imagine any 16-18 yr olds liking their parents hovering over them but the child should have been brought up to understand that they can talk to their parents about ANYTHING.

Anyway, off-topic: Rory, it is now well over a week since you mentioned Ubuntu I have waited and waited to hear your comments, read the article and see what you thought about it. Clearly when you made the first "24 hours with Ubuntu" blog, you were just paying lip-service to it and clearly didn't mean it when you said you were going to do a full write up about it. To say I am surprised would be a lie. It was clear from your original blog that you had no real interest in it and it seems now you're not mentioning it at all anywhere, in the vein hope that your readers simply forget you ever mentioned Linux.
Vaz v Watson - Modern Warfare 2 2:52pm on 09 Nov 2009 Comment 9 - because the developers would than have to write an OS as well, make that OS interact with the hardware and it's not going to be as compatible as they would like it to be .... they're writing code to work under an existing OS as it is, to then have to make an OS and write the game code for it? Not gonna happen.

Don't want to play games in Windwoes? Buy a PS3.
Vaz v Watson - Modern Warfare 2 1:45pm on 09 Nov 2009 here we go again .. violence in computer games.
if the person playing it is not stable enough to relaise the difference between fantasy violence and real-life violence then they deserve to be locked up.

It's an 18 certificate which, unless I am mistaken, means anyone making available to under 18s can be prosecuted, so that's the end of that then.

Now, where's the much-waited review of Ubuntu and why is the petrol price 106.9ppl not in the news?
24 hours with Ubuntu 9:57pm on 08 Nov 2009 RCJ: "Now we are going to have a fuller exploration of the system on this site next week"

Hi Rory; I'm pretty certain it's been a week now, waiting for your thoughts on Ubuntu!
To Poster 371; yes, I've been reading the problems faced by users going from 9.04 to 9.10 - fortunately, I have stuck with 9.04 but the best thing about linux (in any distro) is that you don't HAVE to upgrade if you don't want to ... I've a machine still running a Suse 10.3 machine (11.2 is out in the next week), it works so why change it??

I'd also like to see a bit more on the "unbias" BBC about Linux, Fedora 12 is out soon as is OpenSuse 11.2 (to name a few). So come on, Technology isn't just what Microsoft and Apple are doing!

I beg you though, please find someone with experience of the previous versions to review these two new releases instead of yourself, no offence Rory but I want to hear from someone who understands linux and can give a fair judgement on them.

All the best

badger.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

badger_fruit