Author's posts
May 19 2012
pure bubble
El Reg reports that facebook share dealing opened at $42 per share (up $4 on the opening IPO price of $38). As they wryly point out, the Telegraph reports that that price makes the company “worth” more than Boeing. That is nonsensical beyond belief. Boeing actually make things. Big things, that other companies pay a …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/05/19/pure-bubble/
May 13 2012
disappointing satnav
One of my hobbies is motorcycling. I have travelled extensively by bike in central and southern europe over many years, but oddly, I have never visited scotland before. I intend rectifying that shortly. When travelling in europe I have always made do with the excellent Michelin range of 1/1000000 (1 cm to 10 km) maps. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/05/13/disappointing-satnav/
Apr 24 2012
cheap?
Michal Zalewski (aka lcamtuf) has just announced that google is changing the terms of its vulnerability purchase program. The google announcement says: Today, to celebrate the success of [the program] and to underscore our commitment to security, we are rolling out updated rules for our program — including new reward amounts for critical bugs: $20,000 …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/04/24/cheap/
Apr 18 2012
now switch it back on
Bugtraq can be an interesting list. Back in June 2008 I noted that one Craig Wright had posted an advisory about a vulnerability in an Oral B toothbrush. Well, just over a week ago a chap called Gabriel Menezes Nunes posted a proof of concept remote denial of service attack on a Sony Bravia television …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/04/18/now-switch-it-back-on/
Apr 18 2012
stallman likes sharing
The guardian’s series on internet freedoms (or otherwise) continues today with an article by Richard Stallman on the kindle and ebook publishing. Stallman makes a point I’d missed in my own commentary on the kindle when he says: “Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are not allowed for ebooks. With the Amazon Kindle, …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/04/18/stallman-likes-sharing/
Apr 17 2012
battle for the internet
This week the guardian, my newspaper of choice, is running a week long series of articles under the theme “battle for the internet“. The reporting looks set to be interesting and is due to cover the following themes: “the militarisation of cyberspace”, “the new walled gardens”, “IP wars”, “civilising the web”, “open resistance”, and (doomladen …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/04/17/battle-for-the-internet/
Apr 16 2012
rockbox rocks
Some time ago my wife bought me a Sansa Sandisk Clip+ music player. When she asked me “what kind of MP3 player” I would like, I specifically specified the Clip+ because it could handle ogg vorbis encoded audio files. All my audio disks are encoded in this format. Picky I know, but there you go. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/04/16/rockbox-rocks/
Mar 31 2012
this video is private
I have just tried to (re)view a youtube video I last looked at a couple of weeks ago from a link that a friend sent me in an email. On clicking the link I got the message: “This video is private. If the owner of this video has granted you access, please log in.” On …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/31/this-video-is-private/
Mar 29 2012
that didn’t take long
My last post contained two (non-existent) email addresses in my baldric domain in the extract from my postfix logs. As I said in the post, I had edited the log entry specifically to mask real details. Yesterday, only four days after that post, I received spam email attempts at those addresses. As I have said …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/29/that-didnt-take-long/
Mar 24 2012
android mail client is broken
In January of this year I wrote about t-mobile’s apparent policy of actively looking for and blocking any TLS-secured SMTP sessions over their network. At the time I believed this to be a cockup rather than a deliberate policy. I still prefer to believe that, but the episode left a rather sour taste in my …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/24/android-mail-client-is-broken/
Mar 19 2012
unlinked
Today I received two (make that four now – must sort out my spam filters) phishing emails from a source new to me. Each email purported to come from “linkedin” and each invited me to login to respond to “invitations from your work colleague”. Since a) I have never been a member of linkedin, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/19/unlinked/
Mar 14 2012
unplugged
A few days ago my sheevaplug died. Beyond the obvious lack of response either over the network or through the USB serial connection, the symptoms (single green LED rather than blue and green LED lit, ethernet LED light steady rather than flashing) were all consistent with a blown PSU. This problem is well known and …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/14/unplugged-2/
Mar 09 2012
steam locomotive
Most debian users will be familiar with the ASCII “moo” easter egg in apt-get. I have just stumbled upon a more elaborate piece of ASCII art by one Professor Toyoda Masashi who wrote a joke program to reprimand those command line users who misspell “ls” as “sl” (it happens). I installed it on my desktop …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/09/steam-locomotive/
Mar 07 2012
iBomber Defence: Nuclear Option
Today’s G2 has a nice little article by Tim Dowling called “What’s on David Cameron’s iPad“. Dowling’s article says: “David Cameron is about to take delivery of a specially programmed prime ministerial iPad, reportedly at a cost of £20,000 (3G contract not included). An iPad devotee already – he uses it to catch up on …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/07/ibomber-defence-nuclear-option/
Mar 06 2012
banking stupidity
When I logged on to my new bank site this morning, I tried the “help” offered on the opening screen just to see what they had to say about the range of options available. I was not best pleased to be greeted by the message “Flash is not installed, is not enabled or is not …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/06/banking-stupidity/
Mar 04 2012
am I kidding myself
I have recently moved my bank current and short term savings accounts. Partly this is a political statement in support of the move your money campaign, and partly because I feel that my money might actually be a bit safer (if only slightly) in a small UK Mutual than with the UK arm of a …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/04/am-i-kidding-myself/
Mar 04 2012
wordpress 3.3.1 bug update
Addendum to previous post. On further experimentation, the problem seems to be caused by a combination of graphene 1.6.1 and wordpress 3.3.1, not just 3.3.1 alone. I’ll post to the graphene support site to see if anyone else has seen this.
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/04/wordpress-3-3-1-bug-update/
Mar 04 2012
wordpress 3.3.1 bug?
As part of the move to the new site I also upgraded wordpress to the latest release (3.3.1). Unfortunately I found a small bug in that version so I have reverted to the earlier version. The bug is odd, and not particularly problematic but irritating nonetheless. It prevents upload of media (such as is used …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/04/wordpress-3-3-1-bug/
Mar 01 2012
we’ve moved (again)
Back in September 2009 I moved trivia from its original home on a cheap shared web hosting platform to one of my first VMs at Bytemark. However, in that move I left the design relatively untouched. (Having sat through more than my fair share of tedious powerpoint presentations I’m a firm believer in the power …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/01/weve-moved-again/
Feb 20 2012
HMG goes cloudy
The UK Cabinet Office has announced the winning bidders to supply IT goods and services to UK Government under its new framework contract called “G-Cloud”. The winners are listed on a new website called the CloudStore which, supposedly, allows HMG procurement specialists to search for the goods and services they want to purchase. The new …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/02/20/hmg-goes-cloudy/
Feb 14 2012
Досвидания камрад?
From a peak of around 25,000 mail drops per month in the backscatter I was getting from the .ru domain to the non-existent address “info@baldric.net” I am now seeing virtually none. My logs show a distinct drop off from mid to late December last year to about 10-15 emails per day (when I had previously …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/02/14/%d0%b4%d0%be%d1%81%d0%b2%d0%b8%d0%b4%d0%b0%d0%bd%d0%b8%d1%8f-%d0%ba%d0%b0%d0%bc%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%b4/
Feb 07 2012
perl programmer goes rabid
As a Guardian reader I find the Daily Mail distasteful and I would not normally refer to it in trivia. However, a friend of mine has just sent me a link to a random Daily Mail page generator which manages to lampoon the rag quite successfully. Further investigation of the author’s blog reveals another random …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/02/07/perl-programmer-goes-rabid/
Jan 30 2012
tomorrow the world
A slightly breathless new post over at omgubuntu proudly boasts that the market share of Linux on the desktop jumped “from 0.96% in January 2011 to 1.41% by the year’s end.” (That could equally be be written as a close to 50% rise in Linux’ popularity). No doubt this will scare the pants off Steve …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/30/tomorrow-the-world/
Jan 22 2012
moxie’s proxy
Moxie Marlinspike, a security researcher probably best known for his SSL proxy tool, likes google even less than I do. His googlesharing website says: “Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged in to a Google …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/22/moxies-proxy/