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5151

Living Room / Re: Open source cell phone projects.

« Last post by 40hz on September 18, 2012, 12:53 AM »

@SB - Related to what you're talking about.  (If you can't join them - beat them?)

Building a GSM network with open source
by Andrew Back

Over the last few years open source technology has enabled mobile phone networks to be set up on a shoestring budget at hacker conferences, on a tiny Pacific island and at a festival in the Nevada desert. Andrew Back takes a look at how this has been made possible and at what's involved in building a GSM network using OpenBTS and OpenBSC.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The origins of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) can be traced back to the early 1980s, and to agreements between European nations seeking network interoperability through a standards-based replacement for incompatible first generation networks. The initial GSM specifications were published in 1990 and networks were deployed soon after, with the GSM Association (GSMA) being set up in 1995 to drive standardisation and to promote the system.

The development of GSM has been led by incumbent telcos, large system integrators and multinational equipment providers, and its arcane terminology and formidable catalogue of specifications spread across more than 1,100 PDFs are not for the faint hearted. The comprehensive standards and recommendations produced cover everything from wireless protocols and voice codecs, to subscriber records and encryption. Many of these have been made freely available via the ETSI and 3GPP standards bodies, while some – for example, those detailing the encryption algorithms used for call privacy – are restricted to GSMA members.

The GSMA has been described as "one of the most powerful organisations in the world" – it boasts a membership of around 800 mobile operators across 220 countries, and entry to this prestigious club is a privilege and not a right, with subscriptions starting at an eye-watering £9,000 per year.

Fortunately, bewildering complexity and incomplete access to standards were not enough to dissuade a handful of determined open source developers, and thanks to them there are now two low cost routes to setting up a GSM network.

Full article here.
 

5152

Living Room / Re: Thread to annoy mouser

« Last post by 40hz on September 18, 2012, 12:41 AM »

@Stephen - that is 'just wrong' on so many levels  



 

5153

Living Room / Re: Open source cell phone projects.

« Last post by 40hz on September 17, 2012, 06:59 PM »

Yup.

I think there's a "gentleman's agreement" that they'll move more slowly than the technology allows. Look at the rest of the techno nations. They've all got more sophisticated phones than we do.  Or did last I heard.

Small surprise when you consider some parts of the US still don't have broadband.

5154

Living Room / Re: Open source cell phone projects.

« Last post by 40hz on September 17, 2012, 03:40 PM »

I think the biggest challenge would be being given access to the cell network. Unless I'm mistaken you need FCC certification plus the ok by the wireless providers.

I can't see them doing that in the US. Far too many opportunities for phreaking with homebrews. And way too much revenue from the phone manufacturers to allow hobbyist devices.

Nothing's less "open" than wireless. It's been tightly regulated since radio began. I can't see where "indy" or F/OSS fits into that picture the way things stand right now. They're just not gonna let that happen.
 

5155

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 Pro will now include option to downgrade to Windows 7

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 01:37 PM »

So I guess my question is how does one get a copy of Windows 7 and serial if you have downgrade rights from Win 8 Pro, without paying for cd and piece of paper (serial#)?

I hear all this talk about downgrade blah blah.. but nothing about how to obtain downgrade disc and serial.  

-Cloq (September 16, 2012, 01:10 PM)

It's not blah-blah-blah. Most people who need to do downgrades are already up on the technical details of how to do it. You're probably puzzled since Microsoft doesn't go out of its way to encourage people to downgrade - or furnish a lot of info on how. That's because they mostly leave it to the PC manufacturers to create the mechanism for downgrading. And the exact details can vary by manufacturer. So unless you've done a downgrade before, it can seem confusing.

But here's how it works based on what I've seen:

Usually a machine shipping with version X of an OS that includes rights to downgrade to a previous version will include both the old and the new OS disks.

Please note that "downgrade" in this scenario usually means the the older OS will completely overwrite the drive the newer OS is on. It's seldom possible to do an "in-place" OS downgrade like you would an upgrade. But you'll need to look at the specifics when Windows 8 comes out as to how that's going to work. It may have changed by the time Win 8 is released.

When most users elect to do a downgrade, they usually do it when they first receive their new machine. You unbox, boot off the supplied DVD for the older system, and then do an OEM "factory fresh" install. This is an installation script the PC manufacturer has created, so it's not like a standard Windows installation. In most cases you just boot from a DVD and wait for it to finish doing its thing. Usually no user input is required other than to say it's ok to do it. Once that's done, you do your basic setup and license acceptance, then activate and use the older version OS just like you would if the PC had originally shipped with it installed.

I'm not sure if the downgrade privilege will be available for the "over the counter" OEM builder disk license. If it is, you may be able to use any old copy of Win 7 and use your new Win 8 key to activate it. But it may not be a totally transparent procedure, in which case you'll need to call Microsoft directly for some help with the activation. (Provided it is allowed to begin with.)

I'm guessing the downgrade won't be allowed unless your copy of Win 8 came pre-installed on a new machine that specifically includes the downgrade option. In the past, it's usually been more expensive to get that option since downgrade privileges  didn't apply to home versions of Windows. Only the Pro and higher versions.

Hope that clarifies things for you.  

5156

Living Room / Re: Write until you pass out!?

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 01:15 PM »

For that matter, I don´t see how any one wood.

-Shades (September 16, 2012, 11:43 AM)

Enough of the caddy remarks! 

-cranioscopical (September 16, 2012, 12:27 PM)

I'm sure you two will be able to iron it out eventually.

5157

Living Room / Re: NAS Recommendations?

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 12:04 PM »

+1 for FreeNAS. Have four deployed at different client sites. They're all working splendidly.

5158

Living Room / Re: Tram-mļöi  hhâsmařpţuktôx

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 11:46 AM »

And here I was worried that nobody would know what it was.

-Arizona Hot (September 16, 2012, 11:25 AM)

Nobody?

Here?

This is DoCo! No matter what, that is so not gonna happen. (At least from my experience with this crowd.)  

Note: I found out about Ithkuil some years back when I first got seriously interested in invented or artificial languages. (People into NLP tend to pay a lot of attention to how we use language and words. ) It was part of some background research I was doing for a piece of fiction in which the unusual native language some of the characters spoke became a key plot element in the story. Something Delany used to good effect in his brilliant sci-fi novel Babel-17, which inspired similar treatments of language in other novels.

The texts I used are from the site examples, I didn't make them myself(I don't know how you could do that).

Makes two of us. That is the single most convoluted writing system (and complex language) I've ever looked at. Very cool set of concepts. But I wonder just how workable it would be in a real-world setting.

5159

Living Room / Re: More Facebook Privacy Invasions

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 10:51 AM »

@40hz - You got me having a quick search, and I found this:

http://howmanyofme.com

Lets you see how many people in the US have the same name.

For my name, pretty much all results are about a hockey player.

-Renegade (September 16, 2012, 08:30 AM)

Interesting! And thx for finding that. I got this result back:



Which isn't always 100% correct as they pointed out on the website. And in this case, it isn't. Because I do know of one other person with the exact same name as mine except for the middle initial. We've emailed each other back and forth a few times and had a good laugh over it. Funny thing is we both also know a few people in common - so it looks like the Six Degrees of Separation thing has some truth to it.

Still, 2 people out of 314 million makes for a pretty uncommon name.

Of course now that I've said that (which is a good example of how easy it would be to make an unintentional slip that has privacy implications ) some enterprising individual could consult a listing of unique names for the United States, sort by geographic region, and probably narrow it down to twenty or fewer candidates for my name. Some intelligent guessing at age (as revealed by opinions I've expressed, music I listen to, and pop culture things I've referred to) would narrow that candidate list even further. Probably to five or less. Then all you'd need to do is check voter or motor vehicle registrations and find the house address. That's how the US Justice Dept. works data correlation when conducting an investigation or fishing expedition. And it works!

Put a few people on the ground in vans to verify someone is actually at the address and get a current photo - and voila - they have my ass! Especially now that they plan on the widespread deployment of facial recognition software. Use an ATM, enter an airport, pass through an automated toll lane, or show up on the wrong "privately owned" sec-cam and they'll know where I am.

Like I said, losing battle. Or more correctly: lost battle.

Far too late to put that evil genie back in its bottle.




-------

5160

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 Pro will now include option to downgrade to Windows 7

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 09:01 AM »

Interesting question about the downgrade - I thought all OEMs had to lock the BIOS to Windows 8 so that no other operating system can be installed.

How would go about installing Windows 7 on a machine locked to Windows 8?

-Carol Haynes (September 16, 2012, 06:53 AM)

Good question although no manufacturers are formally required to lock the UEFI to Win 8. But I guess we'll have to wait this Fall for Windows 8 (with "M-Troll") to take its bow.

I'm guessing arrangements and accommodations will be made by Microsoft. They can't afford to let it elevate and become an issue. Apple loves confrontation. Microsoft has always preferred the "camel with a nose in the tent" approach.

5161

Living Room / Re: More Facebook Privacy Invasions

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 07:49 AM »

^It's been suggested and I think tried. Last I heard you can't copyright a proper name or "factual information." Probably more because it would get you better privacy if they allowed it.

5162

Living Room / Re: Tram-mļöi  hhâsmařpţuktôx

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 07:44 AM »

^Maybe it's how the DNS is being resolved wherever you are? Works fine for me either way where I am in the US. If you temporarily switch your primary DNS server to OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220) does it still fail with the www prefix?
 

5163

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 Pro will now include option to downgrade to Windows 7

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 07:30 AM »

@wraith -

Actually, it's not really a creative reinterpretation of the license at all. Microsoft did specifically take "small shop" and "custom builders" into consideration when they did the "builder OEM" license. That question came up in the partner channel when it was first announced. And yeah, you won't find the OEM version in stores AFAIK. You need to order it from someone like Tiger, Newegg, or one of those places.

5164

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 Pro will now include option to downgrade to Windows 7

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 06:27 AM »

I find it ironic that the more expensive 'full' or 'retail' license carries fewer privileges than the less expensive OEM license does.

-40hz (September 15, 2012, 07:01 AM)

Is it the case that OEM licenses are purchased in bulk by OEMs?

-ewemoa (September 16, 2012, 01:39 AM)

^Nope. If you're a 'builder' you can get them in single quantities as long as you buy them at the same time you buy 'qualifying hardware' such as a mobo. Maybe the price isn't anywhere near as good as what Dell or HP get. (Rumors put it between $35 and $50 for the big quantity buyers.) But it's still substantially below retail. At Newegg, Win 7 Pro-64 is $139 for OEM, but $274 for the 'full' retail version.

It's important to know however that the OEM version is only licensed for the specific machine it's purchased for. It's not transferable to another machine - and doesn't come with any tech support from Microsoft. (See below) Which is something to keep in mind if you're building PCs for business clients or other customers. Note too that the OEM license isn't intended for personal use. It's only supposed to be purchased for machines being built for resale. Yup! It is.

Disclaimer: Use of this OEM System Builder Channel software is subject to the terms of the Microsoft OEM System Builder License. This software is intended for pre-installation on a new personal computer for resale. This OEM System Builder Channel software requires the assembler to provide end user support for the Windows software and cannot be transferred to another computer once it is installed. To acquire Windows software with support provided by Microsoft please see our full package "Retail" product offerings.

5165

Living Room / Re: More Facebook Privacy Invasions

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 05:52 AM »

You're only as private as the least secure link anywhere in the chain. I've known people spend years enjoying isolated identities on the web only to have them come crashing down with one bit of carelessness in a message, forum post, or account registration that allowed something to link back to them. It's ultimately a losing battle. Because the web was not designed for privacy. If anything, the fundamental idea behind the web was absolute open access. Just because e-commerce and online banking got bolted onto it after the fact because the Internet` was just too easy a way to get access to a global data communications infrastructure for peanuts didn't change anything. Privacy and security has to be designed in to the core if there's even a chance it will provide some reasonable degree of functionality.

Like was said in Fight Club: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

-40hz (September 15, 2012, 02:41 PM)

Yeah, though having known how Facebook is, I took some steps. I can't 100% prove it's Apple, but it's mighty suspicious because I hadn't logged into that email in months or the Facebook one in years. So in summary, if it is in fact Apple, then I mis-read them. If it's something else like an amazing coincidence from the Facebook side, then oh well. Still, all this is still partially sandboxed. It's still way better than if I'd just mashed my internet life all into one email, because THAT would have been an explosion of worlds colliding to disastrous effect. It may still, but I got this far, it's 2012 and not 2004.

-TaoPhoenix (September 15, 2012, 03:50 PM)

Look at it this way: up until a year ago you could Google my full name (it's fairly unusual) and get less than 20 hits. And of those, only about five actually applied to me. It's been like that for years and years. And that wasn't by accident. I'm a very open and forthright individual on the personal level. I don't play games or keep secrets from my friends or family. But I'm unusually careful about sharing personal information on the web. I've been "The Discreet Discrete" long before it became prudent to be so.

Then my college recently decided to include me in their online alumni directory. And they did so despite the fact I had specifically opted out...

If you Google me now you will find 118 hits, growing by about 2 per month. And most of them do apply to me.

So it doesn't really matter, in the long run, whether you've "outed" yourself or not. All it takes is one other person or organization - or a slip on your own part - and the whole house of cards you've so carefully built to maintain some privacy comes crashing down.

Like I said - losing battle. Oh well!

5166

Living Room / Re: Tram-mļöi  hhâsmařpţuktôx

« Last post by 40hz on September 16, 2012, 05:08 AM »

@ArizonaHot - Good gracious! (url=http://www.ithkuil.net/index.htm) Ithkuil

-40hz (September 15, 2012, 09:21 PM)

proper URL is without the triple w: http://ithkuil.net

-Curt (September 16, 2012, 02:34 AM)

Hi Curt! That's news to me.  

I always thought that was an SEO consideration for the site owner rather than a visitor issue.

It's true that, from a search engine perspective, there is a difference between xyz.com and www.xyz.com. But this isn't something that affects anything on the user level unless xyz.com is a subdomain - in which case the leading www would need to be omitted when browsing to it. However, last I heard, "best practice" was to use the www.xyz.com form as your canonical URL - unless you already had a Google ranking. And if you did, you needed to find out which format got more hits, and then redirect the other to the more popular one.

Since I only very rarely run into situations where the leading www has to be removed in order to get to a website, my rule of thumb is to include it. In the past, most site developers I've talked to said they use the "www + redirect" trick for SEO purposes. So from a visitor's perspective "to www or not to www" shouldn't matter either way.

But it's been a while since I was last involved in web stuff. Has the above convention since changed?

-----

Note: I always test the links in anything I post so at least I know they work even if they're not 'proper' URLS. Besides, most forum and e-mail software will assume a text string that starts with 'www.' is a URL and aromatically treat it as a link. So I think it's generally more convenient to keep the www in a posting unless it causes problems.

5167

Living Room / Re: Tram-mļöi  hhâsmařpţuktôx

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 09:21 PM »

"On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point."

-------------------

@ArizonaHot - Good gracious! Ithkuil? (And I thought I was a geek!) Are you that into languages?

(BTW -  if you think I'm gonna spend two hours trying to work out a message written in friggin' Içtaîl script - you're dreaming!   )

 

5168

Living Room / Re: More Facebook Privacy Invasions

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 02:41 PM »

You're only as private as the least secure link anywhere in the chain. I've known people spend years enjoying isolated identities on the web only to have them come crashing down with one bit of carelessness in a message, forum post, or account registration that allowed something to link back to them. It's ultimately a losing battle. Because the web was not designed for privacy. If anything, the fundamental idea behind the web was absolute open access. Just because e-commerce and online banking got bolted onto it after the fact (because the Internet` was just too easy a way to get access to a global data communications infrastructure for peanuts) didn't change anything. Privacy and security has to be designed in to the core if there's even a chance it will provide some reasonable degree of functionality.

Like was said in Fight Club: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

5169

General Software Discussion / Re: Automatically move files around tip (use your synchronizer program)

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 02:11 PM »

I don't need automation so much as a convenient way to sort/send files to appropriate folders.

Normally, I'll keep a junk drawer folder on the desktop called "!SORT!" which I periodically go through deciding what to file away and what to get rid of. (Isn't it amazing how often something you thought you absolutely had to keep suddenly seemed a lot more like junk when you looked at it a few days later? )

Fortunately, Freewaregenius found a nice little app that works like the sorting desk at an old fashioned message office. It's called Pneumatic Tubes File Router. The name they picked for this app is perfect because that's exactly how it works.

Pneumatic Tubes is a different kind of file management utility. The idea was inspired by the pneumatic tubes mail system used in corporate America in the middle of the 19th century.

This (below) is the entire "about" page. It says it all:



You basically define a location and assign an icon to it. That becomes a "pneumatic tube." Once set up, anything you drag and drop onto that "tube' goes to that location - just as if you stuck it in one of those old fashioned message cylinders and hit the send button. You can create as many tubes as you want and also assign a shortcut key for each.

Looks like this:




Having multiple file drop areas under the control of a single utility is handy. But where this app really shines for me is with its "conveyor belt" feature:

The Conveyor Belt:

The Conveyor Belt is a queue which lists the contents of a target directory. These files can be moved through the available tube routes by triggering their shortcut keys defined in each tube route. You can move forward and backward in the queue by using the navigation buttons on the right portion of the tool.

Dropping a folder into this section reassigns that folder as the new source of the Conveyor Belt, and shall begin listing files from that folder moving forward.

Maybe this one isn't for everybody. But it's perfect for the way I like to do filing.

Homepage and download links for Pneumatic Tubes File Router can be found here.

5170

Living Room / Re: Community Documentation done right - Slackware's new 'doc' project.

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 01:19 PM »

I do like the idea of a nightly build for docs. I loathe purely online documentation. "No, I do not want to visit your web site for information that should have been included with the product..." The nightly build for docs will be a big plus.

-Renegade (September 15, 2012, 12:56 PM)

Agree. I can't stand online-only docs.

If nothing else, I hope that particular idea catches on more broadly regardless of the success or failure of Slackware's doc project. Especially since it's something that can be automated.

It sure beats having site visitors using something like HTTrack to try and get an offline copy of your wiki or doc pages.

5171

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone using Puran Utilities 1.0.2 ??

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 01:04 PM »

I've used Puran's defrag. It does what it says on the tin and is one of several good free defraggers you can download. I didn't see anything in it that really set it apart from the rest. It did the job and didn't break anything doing it. That makes it good enough for me.

Their service manager looked nice, as did the shutdown manager. But I've already got those needs covered by other programs so I doubt I'd install them - except maybe for a friend who wasn't too technical.

One big advantage you get with single function utilities (as opposed to some of those all-in-one suites like Glary Utilities) is that a less sophisticated user has less opportunity to get into trouble since the app can only do one thing.

As far as registry tools go, I have mixed feelings. Under Windows XP, registry fixers and cleaners could (in the hands of a knowledgeable user) yield some positive benefits - provided you didn't allow them to "automatically fix" whatever they found. Doing bare-bones fixes to the XP registry should be handled much like adjusting the truss rod in a guitar (i.e. gradually and slowly - with the absolute minimum done to get the desired result).

With Windows 7 however, I think registry utilities have the potential to cause far more problems than they'll solve. And with the changes Microsoft has made to how Windows 7 handles its registry, these utilities are now mostly useless at best IMHO.

Same goes for registry defraggers. I've never seen a case where defragging the registry did anything, let alone improve overall Windows performance. So outside of possibly using them in some extremely rare service situations, I think they're also mostly useless.

YMMV.  

5172

Living Room / Re: Community Documentation done right - Slackware's new 'doc' project.

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 12:23 PM »

FWIW I sometimes think the need to occasionally resolve software dependencies on your own has the hidden advantage of discouraging too much willy-nilly installation of software.

One problem with the distro repositories (and new software managers) is that it's often like turning a glucose addict loose in a jellybean factory. ("OMG! Just look at all this neat stuff! And it's all FREE!!! Hmm...now THAT looks cool. I wonder what it does?") And sometimes Linux's emphasis on freedom and the constant encouragement to "experiment" backfires.

I wish I had a nickel for every Linux newbie who installed something like Ubuntu and really liked what they saw, who then went hog wild installing everything that looked even remotely interesting (including adding PPAs to their soft sources without fully understanding the risks) and soon wound up with either a dodgy or totally 'pooched' system.

Very often, these same people will then remove Linux from their machines, and begin posting everywhere they can about how "stupid" and "broken" and "bug-ridden" and "not ready for the desktop" Linux is.

Too bad they conveniently forget how you can also bring a Windows machine to its knees by getting a little too crazy installing as much freeware as you can get your hands on.

I had a client who was a freeware/demo junkie. About twice a year he totally roached his main machine doing that and called us to fix it. Last time out I counted 14 different file managers, four defrag utilities, five different antivirus/antil-malwar utilities (three of which had scanners simultaneously active!), three different sync tools (also all simultaneously active), at least a dozen photo editors, god knows how many games, plus a bunch of other things too numerous to count (fonts) or too weird to be worth even looking at.

This guy was frustrated because his machine took something like seven minutes to get to the desktop on a reboot besides regularly freezing up on him once it did. (I myself was amazed he could get that poor little PC to boot at all.)

Oh yeah, he was also a regular user and firm advocate of registry 'fixing' and system tweaking utilities.

This is the same guy who was always protesting how software companies "must take their customers for idiots" and "treated them like children." Not that he really wanted to learn anything. He was of the "these things should just work by now" school of thought.



People like that make me want to scream sometimes. (Although two visits per year at full onsite rate did go a long way towards easing my pain. )

On the other hand, the people who make me want to scream almost all the time are the ones who conveniently forget how dumbed-down Microsoft and Apple try to make their whole "user experience." Supposedly it's done in the name of "convenience" and "user-friendliness." However, a good part of their motivation is also to foster enduser dependence and platform lock-in.

Not to say Linux doesn't have its own problems. But stupid is as stupid does. And nobody (or at least not anybody born on Earth to human parents) comes into this world knowing how to use this stuff. (Not even OSX - despite what Steven Jobs may have thought.) There is always a learning curve involved. Even if it's so ingrained that, by the time they're 12, most people forgot just how much they did have to learn in order to use Windows.

So why should Linux be any different?  

5173

Living Room / Re: Write until you pass out!?

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 07:11 AM »

5174

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 Pro will now include option to downgrade to Windows 7

« Last post by 40hz on September 15, 2012, 07:01 AM »

@ewemoa - Thanks for pointing that out. It's an important limitation to be aware of.

I find it ironic that the more expensive 'full' or 'retail' license carries fewer privileges than the less expensive OEM license does.

I guess Microsoft has seen fit to reverse the old "you get what you pay for" adage when it comes to their retail customers.

5175

Living Room / Re: Shit Apple Fanatics Say

« Last post by 40hz on September 14, 2012, 11:04 AM »

When our contract was about up last time, my wife and I decided to downgrade our phones, from smart phones to the LG Wine II. Nice big keys, no data plan. It's just a simple telephone (well, it can take pics):
 (see attachment in previous post)

-kyrathaba (September 14, 2012, 07:15 AM)

I kind of wonder if that will become a trend.

I was talking to a neighbor the other day, and he was talking about the same kind of thing. He doesn't like all the other crap on his phone, and just wants a "phone", and maybe a camera at the most.

-Renegade (September 14, 2012, 07:45 AM)

If I didn't need access to client e-mails and the occasional use of web protocols like HTTP to look up technical info or file a trouble ticket - or telnet/ssh to remotely check up on a server or router, I'd drop all the smartphone features in a heartbeat.

As long as I could call home (or emergency services and roadside assistance) that would be plenty for me.