3’s SkypePhone: £49 to buy, top up the phone (minimum £10) and you get a month’s free Skype-to-Skype calls and messages. The phone appears to have a surprisingly decent talk time too, and according to the specs sheet has Bluetooth A2DP for wireless stereo headsets (sadly, however, it’s only dual-band on GSM). Shame the 3 network has a bit of a reputation, otherwise I’d actually consider porting over from O2. Still, an interesting concept and one hopefully that other mobile operators will learn from.
Month: October 2007
Poor “wi-fi security” BBC News article
More holes have been picked in the security measure designed to protect the privacy and data of wi-fi users.
Of course, when you actually read the article, it turns out to be yet another attack on WEP.
WEP is not the security measure. WEP is a security measure, and it’s an extremely poor one. WPA, which is on pretty much every ADSL router that people in the UK actually own because it’s been around for about as long as WEP’s been useless, is the security measure that people should be using, but this article only actually mentions that close to the end and then adds a bunch of confusion about WPA2.
It’s also incorrect on operating systems: since Windows 2000, for example, has no native wireless support, everything depends on the driver. Therefore the Ralink-chipset PCI card my brother uses on his Win2K-running room PC can connect to the home WPA network with absolutely no difficulty.
If you have Windows XP, you can update to SP2 unless it’s a pirate copy; and even then, you should be able to find a mate with a copy that will. If you have Vista, Linux or a Mac running recent OS X there’s no difficulty with WPA or WPA2. And the only current, mainstream device I can think of which isn’t WPA by default is the Nintendo DS; the 360 through its wireless adapter, the PSP (above firmware 2.0, which you’ll have had to update to play any games anyway), PS3 and Wii all support it fine. And yet the guy from BT who they question says:
A spokesman for BT said that it used WEP on its home hub products because of the compatibility issues.
“We use WEP for a very sensible reason,” said the spokesman, “there are a number of devices out there in the marketplace that do not use WPA.”
So why not supply it WPA as default (as Sky and Be Unlimited do) and then tell people in the manual or on an information sheet how to scale it down using an Ethernet cable and a web browser if they actually have some of the ancient crap they worry about? By supplying WEP you are supplying a product that is broken and gives a false sense of security – WEP is about as secure as covering a broken window with tin foil.
A better way to go about this from a consumer protection point of view would be an article talking about how WPA improves your security, how to put it on and at the end say that if there’s any difficulty with it, update your devices and if that doesn’t work, WEP might have to be your least worst option if you can’t put an Ethernet cable out to them. At least the ISPs have stopped supplying routers which default to unencrypted now, but there’s still a long way to go and articles like this one are not helping.
The horror, the horror
Summary: I look at certain slightly connected horror films on near-enough current release – Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Grind House and Black Sheep – and discuss where Hollywood has lost its way and how it could fix it. I also give reasons why I don’t like Rob Zombie’s Halloween. A lot of them. Very few spoilers – I try to keep it to a low amount – but the article is very long, and so there’s a page break coming up now.
Harassment kills a fantastic blogger
I genuinely fear for her safety at the hands of this person (I will refrain from calling someone who picks on children ‘a man’). Three days running he has posted blog entries about her, two of which assume her identity and one of which is attempting to gain money in her name. I do not know where he would stop. Therefore the only way to make her safe is to remove us from his presence.
Left Brain/Right Brain was one of the best autism blogs on the net, unafraid to bash those who credulously exploit autistic spectrum disorders to sell quack cures or promote vaccination scares. Fore Sam/John Best, on the other hand, is an absolute asshole. Losing LB/RB is a loss for everyone and it will be missed.
In Rainbows update
The email I’ve just received says that the files for the album download will be 160Kbit MP3s. Depends on whether it’s 160 ABR or CBR, of course, but still not that shabby. Should be tomorrow morning (along of course with Portal and HL2 Episode Two), so stay tuned for a review then.
Edit at noon: The zip has just downloaded really, really quickly off the distribution server – Radiohead have obviously got their act together with regards to bandwidth. The files are 160CBR, but sound pretty good though. First stage review soon (and rest assured, I won’t be with that guy on the BBC site who thinks Pablo Honey is their best album.)
I am watching the Chinese GP
And the Ferrari team have their cigarette advertising on – very large Marlboro logos everywhere. Nice cheat if you can get it.
Giving with one hand, taking with another
Sony have cut the price of the PS3 in the UK to something a little more reasonable, months after they did so in the States. Previous to this price cut, the £425 60GB PS3, which excluding VAT (the right way to compare these things) is £361.70, was the only model in the UK. In the US, this model is $499, which when converted to pounds is £244.65 – so an entire £115 (a little over $230) was going directly into Sony’s pockets as a stupidity tax on Brits. Now the 60GB is £349, £297.02 excluding VAT, meaning the ripoff is now only £50.
Never give Sony an even break however – they’ve also introduced the 40GB cut-down PS3 we’ve been hearing about, for £299 (removing VAT and converting, $520), but it’s a serious ripoff – they’ve reduced the number of USB ports, removed the SD card etc. slots and even worse than that, they’ve removed PS1/PS2 backwards compatibility.
Which was in software anyway so doesn’t cost them anything to include whatsoever. And of course this crocked model is going to be the only PS3 in Europe in the future. Always give it to Sony to mess things up big time – the US’s only PS3 in the future will be a $600 80GB model with the same backwards compatibility and sockets as the original Euromodel.
And there still aren’t any games. If you want a console, buy a 360 and/or a Wii. If you want to play PS2 games, buy a PS2 – you can buy it very cheaply. If you want a Blu-Ray player, buy a Blu-Ray player. Do not buy the PS3; if you must, buy the 60GB, but it only encourages them.
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 