Monthly Archives: January 2015

View from Holy Cross, Friday, January 09, 2015

Much to say but may not get to it today. I go home this afternoon, after 3, no idea how long it will take to get settled. Just had the last therapy session.

There is a lot from CES. Of course I was not there but I have read a lot of press releases and accounts, will have a full report.. It appears to be incremental progress, making salable products of last year’s ideas, but the increments grow larger. Last year 3d  printers were a novelty; this year they are for sale, and better, and that trend will continue, to change manufacturing forever.  Specialty gadgets are real now. 

This is a good analysis  of why you may love Windows 10

Windows 10’s new browser will have the most advanced features ever

Microsoft is planning to radically overhaul its web browser in Windows 10. Sources familiar with the company’s Windows plans tell The Verge that the new browser, codenamed Spartan <http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/29/7460961/microsoft-working-on-brand-new-web-browser-windows-10> , will include a host of new features not found in rival browsers. Chief among the plans for Spartan is new inking support that allows Windows 10 users to annotate a web page with a stylus and send the notes and annotations to a friend or colleague. The web note service will be powered by Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage, meaning notes will be stored on a copy of a web page that can be accessed by any browser across multiple platforms. As annotations are shared, multiple users can doodle on a web page and share edits and annotations between groups.

Cortana is coming to your browser

A second major feature for Spartan will be the integration of Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant. Microsoft is planning to use Cortana to surface information on flights, hotel bookings, package tracking, and other data within the traditional address bar. If you use Cortana to track a particular flight and start to search for "American Airlines" in the browser address bar, it will automatically display tracked flights and allow Spartan users to view the status of the flight directly. It’s a subtle addition, but you’ll also be able to access Cortana search directly from the new tab interface in Spartan. Cortana integration in the Spartan browser is planned to replace every instance of the existing Bing methods in Internet Explorer.

Other features include a new way to group tabs together to declutter the occasionally messy interface of multiple browser tabs. Spartan will allow users to group tabs however they want, making it easier, for example, to split up personal tabs from work ones. Microsoft also originally planned to allow Spartan to support custom themes, but we understand the company has dropped this for the final new browser in Windows 10. Such support may arrive in future updates.

Spartan will be a Windows Store app for regular updates

Spartan is designed to be a single browser across PCs, tablets, and phones. We’re told that Microsoft will make Spartan a Windows Store app, enabling the company to quickly and easily update the browser in future. ZDNet previously reported <http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-building-a-new-browser-as-part-of-its-windows-10-push/> that Microsoft will continue to include Internet Explorer in Windows 10, and we understand this will be primarily for legacy compatibility reasons. Spartan is the main browser in Windows 10, and most users will be accessing the web using it. While Spartan will be a Windows Store app, we understand Microsoft isn’t planning to make it a universal app initially. One version of Spartan will be available in the Store as a desktop app, and another as a modern app for tablets and phones. Both will be updated regularly with identical features.

Microsoft is planning to keep the look and feel of Spartan very similar across phones, tablets, and PCs. The desktop version looks like a simplified version of Chrome, with a tabbed interface above the address bar, alongside options to go back, forward, and refresh a page. It’s all designed to look lightweight, without the bloat typically associated with older versions of Internet Explorer. While the Spartan name is a codename, it’s not clear if Microsoft plans to continue the Internet Explorer branding with its new browser. That naming and other features of Spartan could play a part in Microsoft’s Windows 10 event on January 21st. Microsoft is planning to detail the consumer features of Windows 10 at its press event later this month, including its phone and tablet features.

We reached out to Microsoft for comment on its Windows 10 browser plans, but a spokesperson says the company has "nothing to share."

Verge Video from CES 2015: First Look at Dell’s XPS 13 Laptop

* Related Itemsmicrosoft <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/microsoft> spartan <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/spartan> features <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/features> browser <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/browser> internet explorer <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/internet-explorer> windows 10 <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/windows-10>

.

This Little Robot Wants to Carry Your Bags wsj

* By

* Geoffrey A. Fowler <http://topics.wsj.com/person/A/biography/1345>

*

*

Javascript is required to view this video. Please enable javascript.

What kinds of things will robots help us with, both at home and when we’re out and about?

At the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, 5 Elements Robotics demonstrated a robot assistant called Budgee Bot designed to help with one specific task: carrying stuff.

Maybe I’ll get one…

The situation in France could be said to be Colonial chickens coming home to roost, or a failure of will. As you choose. But France faces an existential threat. So do we. Can we overcome it? It is a real question. Not with present strategy.

#France <https://twitter.com/hashtag/France?src=hash> ‘s most famous cartoonist, 87 year old Uderzo – father of Asterix – comes out of retirement for #CharlieHebdo <https://twitter.com/hashtag/CharlieHebdo?src=hash> .

Space X

And later last night, I saw that SpaceX has rescheduled the launch attempt to the next available window, 4:47 am EST Saturday.

Oh well, what’s one more day given the decades we’ve been at this? No guarantee they’ll launch Saturday either, of course – the flight’s primary goal is to get essential cargo to Station, the launch window is brief, and they won’t go if the instrumentation doesn’t show the rocket entirely ready.

Just to be clear for all, there’s also no guarantee this particular test will 100% succeed. Let me quote from the most recent Space Access Update at http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau138.html:

"They will build on previous successes in slowing down F9’s first stage from a significant fraction of orbital velocity to a low-altitude hover, this time attempting to land their F9R first stage intact on a position-stabilized barge floating downrange of the launch site.

"We have been talking for decades about the possibility of recovering orbital-launcher rocket stages intact enough to quickly and cheaply reuse them, thus radically changing the launch cost equation. Now SpaceX will be making their first attempt at this in just a few weeks.

It is an attempt, mind – an engineering test, intended to quickly discover what the simulations and analysis may have missed.

"There’s no guarantee it’ll work the first time, but if it doesn’t, the lessons learned will be quickly applied to the next test, and the next.

Once SpaceX does recover a stage intact, there’s then no guarantee it will be in good enough shape to fly again right away. But if not, it will provide data needed to redesign the next try to return in better shape. We would not bet against SpaceX attempting the first actual reflight of their Falcon 9 first stage within the next year or two."

Looking forward to it, trying to be patient…

Henry

At least they try!..An X program that makes money…

Jerry,

Welcome home.

Je suis Charlie. As a right-thinking Englishman it pains me to have to say nice things about the French, but I have no option. Enmerde yourselves Abdul.

In the matter of ransomware Why does law enforcement not attack those collecting the ransoms? This would work wonders A short jail sentence for the bosses of a credit card company and no more ransomware.

John Edwards

Mostly because we cannot find them –  bitcoins are hard to follow – or if we do it is in some country that will not extradite them.  It has been suggested that we nuke these places from orbit, but we don’t do that to jihadist homes…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Holy Cross, Thursday, January 08, 2015

Going home tomorrow so all’s well. There ought to be a service for hiring malicious hackers to harass people who send long unsolicited mail to people. The hospital router gets overloaded, and 7 Mb messages stall the system and it takes forever to clear them. Ah well. It has been all day and still… The latest thing are messages big but no visible content and no headers. Have no idea what that is.

.

According to an editorial posted in USA Today, "people know the

consequences" of insulting the Mohammedans’ prophet. The piece goes

on to ask, :"Why did France allow the tabloid to provoke Muslims?" and so forth:

<.>

Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, "Whoever insults a Prophet kill him."

However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.

Within liberal democracies, freedom of expression has curtailments, such as laws against incitement and hatred.

</>

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/

This is something I’d expect to see in a transcript of a Bin Laden video…

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

You have identified one of the primary problems. Sharia states clearly that infidels are not equal to Muslims, and anyone who leaves Islam deserves death. It is fundamental to Islamic Law that infidels, even people of the Book – primarily Christians and Jews – must pay a tax in order to avoid conversion. For everyone else it is Islam or the sword. Many say that they do not practice that, but it is there and not to believe it is heresy. They have a remedy for heretics.

Coming to a strategy in this war is key. If it is treated as a problem of law enforcement we are doomed to a strategy of defense only, giving all initiative to the enemy. That makes for a long war. Have we that much patience? Will the nation make war upon those who have had enough of reaction to enemy atrocities?

NBC’s Terror Expert Kohlmann: "France Has A Very Serious Problem With Islamphobia" <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/track/trackurl.asp?q=bxBwrlnesmrr

I would have thought that having a security expert who puts Islamophobia as the major threat after an attack on a publications office may be part of the problem.

Hello, Jerry –

Best of luck on your recovery.

On 30 Dec, you printed a number of responses which generally pooh-poohed the idea that the FBI could have got it right about N. Korea and the Sony hack. In general, they showed considerable disrespect for the FBI’s forensic IT capabilities. "How could they possibly search through proxy servers, spoofed MAC addresses, etc and finger North Korea in such a short time?"

Well, apparently they didn’t need to. From http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sony-hack/sony-hackers-got-sloppy-used-north-korean-ips-fbi-director-n281556 the North Koreans got sloppy and didn’t do any of that stuff. Using IPs that are unique to N. Korea seems pretty boneheaded, but that seems to be the case. And the alternate theory presented in the posts, that the hack was done by disgruntled insiders – well, finding a way to get access to N. Korean servers in order to cover one’s tracks seems a little much for Hollywood IT workers, even those who have helped create the "Mission Impossible" series.

So, in this case, the FBI needed only the IT equivalent of the ability to read the postmark on an envelope.

Underestimating an opponent is a classic prelude to failure, but so is overestimation.

Regards,

Jim Martin

Interesting. Of course they can’t train people without exposing them to the West. Sort of like the Soviets except Communism makes more sense than fealty to Kim Jong Un.

Jerry,

I’m glad to see you coming back to writing and commenting so quickly.

Best wishes for eventual complete recovery.

I’m especially glad that your stroke was (I’d guess) recognized and treated quickly, before much (or any, I hope) permanent damage happened.

My analogy from ten years living with my Dad’s disabling stroke (alas not treated quickly) is that it’s the difference between losing the local programming for the affected skills but being able to relearn relatively quickly because the local hardware’s still there, versus losing the local hardware that slice of programming ran on, at which point relearning is dependent on retasking other hardware and is much slower and more problematic.

Even the latter can be overcome eventually, but it takes a lot more brute persistence. May all your recovery be of the former sort, but if you do hit any of the latter, well, I don’t see you as inclined to give up too easily in any case so I’ll spare you the obvious advice.

I’m very much looking forward to SpaceX’s next try at intact recovery of their first stage. The launch window is 2:09 am your time Friday, 3:09 mine, so unless insomnia hits we’ll likely read about it in the morning.

I’d be tempted to wake up and watch, except they (understandably I

think) aren’t going to televise the landing attempt live in any case.

Regardless, flying an entire booster stage to Mach 10 or so then bring it back in one piece is a major step toward things we’ve both been working toward for a long time. May we both have cause for some joy come tomorrow morning.

Henry

I await…

Regarding Cryptolocker (malware that encrypts your data files, and requires a ransom to unencrypt), it is extremely difficult to unencrypt without paying the ransom.

Your advice to backup to an external hard drive then disconnect that hard drive from your system is good advice. Backups are important. One could also copy to DVD, although that is much slower. Large capacity external hard drives are relatively inexpensive. So that advice is good for the average user, or perhaps the small business.

The difficulty is in the implementation. You have to remember to do it. And you need to have a good rotation schedule so that you have multiple backups in case you don’t catch an infection right away. The ‘googles’ will have lots of advice on rotation backup schedules.

But the implementation is difficult. My own procedure is thus:

– I use the Microsoft SyncToy to backup my laptop data files to another computer on my home network. The advantage is that it only copies changed files, plus also deletes files as needed. Quite easy to set up, and pretty fast. So that protects my laptop files.

– On that desktop, I have the Carbonite automated backup program installed (www.carbonite.com). It takes care of automatic backups, doing them continually in the background so as to not affect the use of the computer. Files are encrypted and stored in Carbonite’s "cloud", and can be retrieved to any computer at any location. The cost is reasonable for personal use, plus they also have plans for businesses. They also have plans to support multiple computers in a location.

It is my understanding that Carbonite keeps multiple versions of your files, so it is possible to get a previous version of your backed up files.

I could do the backups myself, but using Carbonite as my automatic – "don’t think about it" – backup is more convenient. And it protects me from any possible data loss due to theft or damage (fire, flood, local hard disk failure, etc.). And I don’t have to think about it.

There are others that provide similar services to back up your data to the cloud. I am not worried about my data security in the "cloud", even though some of my files contain confidential data. It provides me with a backup process that I don’t have to worry about.

There are many ways to backup and protect your data. I am happy with my choice.

(I have no affiliation with Carbonite other than being a satisfied customer.)

…Rick Hellewell, Security Dweeb

Jerry:

First, I’m glad you’re doing better.

Second, the solution to Cryptowall and similar problems would be to get a Letter of Marque, recruit a few friends, and go hunting.

While law enforcement agencies have to play by the rules, a Letter of Marque pretty much allows you to set your own rules. A sufficiently skilled group of researchers would be able find out where the money has gone — at which point, the same group could make life interesting for the scumbags.

Since it’s not likely that a Letter of Marque would be granted, another solution is for the email and browser writers to set a default that attachments won’t be opened without specific authorization. Click the link, and a pop-up box would require the user to enter a code before the attachment can be opened.

My brother and I have a practice of sending a single-use authenticator in any email which includes a link. This authenticator is simple — a reference to something we’ve discussed in a recent phone call — but it’s something that nobody else would have.

Keith

Do you think the President would issue you one?  And Ukraine might object to your hunting there…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View Holy Cross Hospital, Tuesday, January 6, 2015

To all old calendar readers, Merry Christmas

The therapists had me working very hard, so this will be short on originality.

Begin with this, which I suppose most of you know about, but some will not, and you all should be aware:

any other way to get rid of it besides paying the ransom? No — it appears to be technologically impossible for anyone to decr

Subject: How My Mom Got Hacked – NYTimes.com

This was sent to (my boss) yesterday and I thought you might want to be aware of it. (Cybersecurity lead), is there something we can do to protect ourselves?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/how-my-mom-got-hacked.html?emc=eta1

MY mother received the ransomnote on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It popped up on her computer screen soon after she’d discovered that all of her files had been locked. “Your files are encrypted,” it announced. “To get the key to decrypt files you have to pay 500 USD.” If my mother failed to pay within a week, the price would go up to $1,000. After that, her decryption key would be destroyed and any chance of accessing the 5,726 files on her PC — all of her data — would be lost forever.

Sincerely, CryptoWall.

CryptoWall 2.0 is the latest immunoresistant strain of a larger body of viruses known as ransomware. The virus is thought to infiltrate your computer when you click on a legitimate-looking attachment or through existing malware lurking on your hard drive, and once unleashed it instantly encrypts all your files, barring access to a single photo or tax receipt.

Everyone has the same questions when they first hear about CryptoWall:

Is there any other way to get rid of it besides paying the ransom? No — it appears to be technologically impossible for anyone to decrypt your files once CryptoWall 2.0 has locked them. (My mother had several I.T. professionals try.)

But should you really be handing money over to a bunch of criminals? According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the F.B.I. and the National White Collar Crime Center, this answer is also no. “Ransomware messages are an attempt to extort money,” one public service announcement helpfully explains. “If you have received a ransomware message do not follow payment instructions and file a complaint.” Right. But that won’t get you your files back. Which is why the Sheriff’s Office of Dickson County, Tenn., recently paid a CryptoWall ransom to unlock 72,000 autopsy reports, witness statements, crime scene photographs and other documents.

Finally, can law enforcement at least do something to stop these attacks in the future? Probably not.

The story is interesting. Have a look if you have not seen it. Then go buy a gigabit hard drive, disconnect your system from the Internet, and back up anything you would pay to recover if this happened to you. Disconnect the backup drive and put it in a safe place. Now you can reconnect to Internet. If your data – photos, manuscripts – are valuable, a bit later buy another drive and do it again a few weeks later. Now alternate doing backups with those drives…

Dr. Pournelle:

I came across the print version of this article at work, and it’s author was on NPR today.

I believe it is worth a read.

And the short answer to the question posed in the title is "the civilian leadership." (See,e.g., Vietnam)

We continue to pray for your quick and complete recovery.

God bless,

Lee

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/

"The result is a class that educates their children in private schools or at home, and all the rest."

Across the country a class of people is attempting a third way. Generally economically disadvantaged, they yet understand that a real education – vs. credentialing – will enable their children to do economically better than they have. So they seek to put their children in schools that are publicly funded but not publicly operated – i.e., charter schools. This is being strenuously resisted by our political class, members of the same class that puts their children in private schools, as their ability to maintain their membership in the political class is in part dependent on satisfying the people who operate the public schools.

Ron Fox

Charter schools are an attempt to return at least some control of local schools to parents.  The current system is that pay and the professionals  run a terrible system in which most resources are dedicated to those who get the least from it, and the Republic suffers. The professionals prosper.  No one gets fired.  Few learn much,particularly smart kids.

The results are predictably awful.  And then the kids borrow money to go to college to learn what high schools used to teach.

Regarding Bitcoin and BitStamp,Peter Glaskowsky says

The Bitstamp situation is pretty mild by comparison with what happened at Mt. Gox. It does not break new ground or raise the threat level.

Even what happened at Mt. Gox has happened at real banks many times. Banks have adopted various controls to reduce their risks, which Bitcoin repositories should study and adopt as needed, but fundamentally a bank account full of electronic Bitcoin is no more vulnerable to theft that one full of electronic dollars.

I realized something about the "fiat money" discussion. Dollars are fiat because they are backed by nothing more than a sincere promise from a sovereign government to honor them in trade.

But no single entity makes that promise for Bitcoin. In effect we’re relying on a distributed promise made by all the people who own or trade in Bitcoin. That approach has certain advantages, but also some very serious disadvantages.

. png

‘The world doesn’t need another Steve Jobs. They just want Jeff Bezos, the way he used to be.’

<http://www.fastcompany.com/3039887/under-fire>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View whatever, Monday, January 5, 2015

Another strenuous day, which is what I want. Learning to stand, sit, walk in the walker … meanwhile Mike Donahue and Roberta get the house ready while Alex and Eric are in Las Vegas working CES. Life goes on, I have my towel, the nurses here are angels, and recovery continues. It is not exciting to many, but now I can touch my little finger with my thumb and make the Spock sign with my right hand. Doesn’t sound like much, but it is something.

What recovery from a stroke means is that you must learn things all over again. What used to be an automatic act becomes a voluntary one, at least until it becomes a habit. One such action is swallowing, then swallowing without choking. I had to learn those all over again. I am learning it, but it is surprising how long it takes.

I intended to write more , but the therapists have exhausted me. That’s good but it is exhausting.

Tonight is a bit thin, but it has some interesting points

This is a full report I have not been able to examine in sufficient detail, but it contains more information on author earnings than anything I have yet seen:

authorearnings.com.

<http://authorearnings.com/reports/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

If you are interested in self publishing I heartily recommend you read it.

The  education mess is the greatest threat to the US of all.  Here is more on what is happening

“With all this studying, the kids’ brains become rigid. They know how to take a test, but they can’t think for themselves.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/inside-a-chinese-test-prep-factory.html?_r=0>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Is it worth going into debt – lifetime debt, becoming a bondsman – for what most colleges give? I recommend to your attention http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/learning-curve_822394.html

Jerry,

With respect to Mr. Dobbins’ quote, “With all this studying, the kids’ brains become rigid. They know how to take a test, but they can’t think for themselves,” let me add a bit.

I have done a fair amount of tutoring; in fact I brought in some spare cash while I was getting well started as an author by doing so, by then having left my space job after losing a friend aboard the Columbia disaster. And I’ve seen that thinking bit first-hand.

I will never forget the private school senior taking Algebra II and preparing for the graduation exam. With a little bit of guidance, not very much, she worked her way through setting up the problem, manipulating the equation into the needed form, and plugging and chugging the numbers, all the way down to the final bit of arithmetic, in which she had to multiply 2 x 13. I have no doubt but that any of your readers can give that result almost without thinking about it.

She reached for her calculator.

I smacked her hand away and took the calculator. "That’s basic arithmetic," I told her. "You should be able to do it in your head."

She couldn’t. She had never learned the multiplication tables. I had to sit down with her and show her how to multiply it out on paper. A senior, ready to graduate FROM AN ELITE PRIVATE SCHOOL, who could not do basic multiplication.

And that was only one example I could give you, out of my own experience.

And it’s quite apart from the substitute teaching session I did at a local public middle school, wherein two boys abruptly squared off against each other with fists raised, and I had to break it up fast, as the rest of the class was taking sides…

Or the myriad of kids who had developed test anxiety so severe that they made A’s in their homework and F’s on their tests…

On and on…

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

Certainly everyone can and should learn the addition and times tables, preferably up to twenty,  by second grade end.  Actually they can be learned in first; we did in St Anne’s in Memphis in 1938.  Maybe a few won’t learn the tables, as a few won’t learn to read, and now apparently the public schools can’t teach anything that all don’t learn with the worst teachers. We sow the wind

.  The result is a class that educates their children in private schools or at home, and all the rest. That is the end of the Republic

Taranto on Sony Hack and NK

http://www.wsj.com/articles/escape-from-you-nork-1420234603

Money quote:

As long as we had (Bruce Bennett, the RAND Corp.’s North Korea expert)’s ear, we asked him who he thought was behind the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. He said, contrary to much speculation, that he thought it was indeed Pyongyang. How could a country that barely has electricity—we’ve all seen those satellite photos <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140226-north-korea-satellite-photos-darkness-energy/> —pull off such a sophisticated act of sabotage? Bennett said the North Korean regime has a cadre of several thousand hackers, conscripted as schoolchildren recognized for mathematical gifts, who are based in China and carefully guarded to avoid defection

 

http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/12/29/area-of-arctic-sea-ice-is-nearly-identical-to-30-years-ago/

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

 

 

‘Global Sea Ice Breaks Record High For The Day – Antarctic Sea Ice Also Breaks Record High For the Day’

And it’s SUMMER in the Antarctic!

Stephanie Osborn

Interesting.  Given the weather in the US – well North America –  what is the source of the statement that this is the hottest year ever?

I think that it is not…except for places where the data set is, uhm, "off," shall we say…

http://surfacestations.org/images/MarysvilleCA_USHCN_Site_small.jpg

A nice example of what the data stations look like. The ones in Death Valley are just as bad.

Stephanie Osborn

And yet she should know.  I have asked others. and get no good answers. One friend who ought to know says

What she said, but with considerably more detail:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/12/2014-a-record-warm-year-probably-not/

The running satellite data record, for comparison http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/12/uah-global-temperature-update-for-nov-2014-0-33-deg-c/

The general web site:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

I continue to question the data that says this the hottest year ever

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.