Posts by Mikael Eiman

In Sweden…

Most of the installations are what we call "bedrock heat", or something along those lines. Instead of running pipes horizontally near the surface, you make a single deep hole down to where it's hotter. Takes less space that way.

Illustrations and easy to read Swedish info over at http://www.energimyndigheten.se/sv/Lattlast/Hur-ska-du-varma-upp-ditt-hus/Varmepump/

No rejected, just delayed

The law hasn't been rejected, it was just sent back to the working group that wrote it for minor adjustments. They're planning on voting on the adjusted proposal again later today, and it looks like it'll pass that vote.

The changes that are being added is another layer of checks instead of fixing the fundamental problem: instead of just allowing surveillance of those suspected of breaking the law, -everyone- will get snooped on.

Another big change from before is the allowed uses of the surveillance. Before, the goal was to prevent a military invasion (from Soviet, although it wasn't explicitly stated). Now the goal will be to prevent "external threats" in general, and it will be up to FRA to determine what is included in this scope.

One big reason for the law change, according to some, is that it will allow FRA to gather a lot of information from general Internet traffic that is routed through Sweden and pass it on to other countries' intelligence agencies, e.g. CIA. Since a lot of Russian Internet traffic flows through Sweden, we'll be back to when Sweden was USA's spy on Russia's border. It is also assumed that FRA and other Swedish agencies have already made such deals and need the new law to be able to hold their part of the agreement, which would be the reason for the heavy-handed handling from the prime minister.

Finally, it's been observed that this is a system that would make Stasi green with envy. If or when a party like the nazis or the communists come into power, they will have a perfect system for tracking down dissidents already in place and ready for use. How helpful of us. Oh, and speaking of which: surveillance orders given directly by the ministers bypass the checks put into the system to prevent abuse. Not very good checks if they're bypassed, are they?

Easily fixed..

One way to prevent this that's invisible to the OS is to change the memory controller a tad.

* Add a random encryption key to it during manufacturing

* Add some logic so that it can encrypt/decrypt something like AES

* Make the controller encrypt everything that's stored in a memory block flagged as no-execute

* Let the disk-encryption software tag the memory block containing the key as no-execute

Performance will be affected to some extent, but since any application that uses a lot of cpu should fit in the cpu's cache anyway, it shouldn't be too bad. The memory blocks will hardly ever be modified, and forcing the memory controller to read in chucks of 128 or 256 bits (an encryption block) should only be a problem if you have a gazillion jumps in your code - which is a bad thing anyway.

I'm sure that Microsoft et al wouldn't mind that it'd be yet another piece in the pussle to enforce DRM either, so adding OS support shouldn't be too much of a problem if required.

So, someone want to call Intel and tell them to do it?

Not likely, is it?

I'd assume that a fifth version of the draft wouldn't have rather obvious problems like pushing the same point twice, like this one does with the app pricing för the Phone and Touch...

Works fine on Touch

If only all installations were this easy.. A URL, one click and a reboot was all it took to ruin yet another work day playing with my Touch!

In other words: it works like a charm.