Recent content by TeraMedia

  1. TeraMedia

    Self-Driving Car Accidents Will Make Us All Safer

    I don't want fully-automated driving that can't be overridden. I do, however, look forward to the day when we have something akin to the autopilot on airplanes. If that autopilot is smart enough to keep me in my lane, brake safely for stopped traffic, keep the speed safe (and hopefully with...
  2. TeraMedia

    Marketers Can Still Track You Through Gmail's Cached Images

    One additional note: If you are using Gmail with a browser, and are using HTTPS (which I believe may be the default now), then your browser may already be blocking or warning against downloading images from marketers irrespective of whether Google does anything with them or not.
  3. TeraMedia

    Marketers Can Still Track You Through Gmail's Cached Images

    @jimmysmitty: "thing that happen on GMails back end does not get seen by you, your system or your AV." First, Gmail can be used either with a browser-based client or with an email client such as Outlook. I currently do both. In either case, what gets delivered to the client's computer is an...
  4. TeraMedia

    '60 Minutes' BIOS Plot May Be NSA Invention

    Is this just a simplistic attempt to redirect us away from some of Snowden's revelations, or are they trying to cover up something even more embarrassing?
  5. TeraMedia

    LG Smart TVs Found Snooping on Home Networks

    Google collecting private WiFi data: "Google, that wouldn't be your hand in that cookie jar, would it?" "Umm... No! Umm, I mean... yeah." LG collecting data from TVs: "LG, that wouldn't be your hand in that cookie jar, would it?" "Umm.... No! Umm, it's your fault you agreed to the T&Cs! It's...
  6. TeraMedia

    Net Neutrality Lawsuit Threatens Netflix, YouTube

    I fear we may have but one hope. If the ISPs get reclassified as common carriers, then at least regulations can be used to go after them. If net neutrality ends, then it is truly a frightening thought. Imagine TimeWarner signing an exclusivity deal with Disney, for example. Now imagine being...
  7. TeraMedia

    LG Admits Its Smart TVs Spy on Users, Promises Partial Fix

    "Oh shoot! They figured out that we're transmitting filenames! What excuse can we come up with for that?" "How about that we're looking up *metadata*. Yeah! That's the ticket! We were trying to provide a useful *service* to the users!" Anyone want to get in line to be "serviced"?
  8. TeraMedia

    Dating-Site Data Breach Dumps 42 Million Plain-Text Passwords

    I have to think that the reason sites don't employ reasonable password encryption has nothing to do with computational cost, and everything to do with poor software design. There is far more computational cost introduced by the encryption and decryption required for SSL traffic than there is...
  9. TeraMedia

    LG Smart TVs May Spy on Users, Blogger Says

    @agnickolov: I was thinking the same thing. They capture the data, and then return a 404 to make news reporters think they didn't. Excuse me while I go unplug my TV and receiver.
  10. TeraMedia

    Xbox One Hands On: Multitasking Multimedia Machine

    I'm surprised it requires a cable box. They could have had a more integrated solution - requiring no IR transmitter or other control connection to an external STB - with a cable card and some tuner hardware such as Ceton or HDHomeRun Prime. Plus, they could then offer additional capabilities...
  11. TeraMedia

    3D, Virtual Reality, And Immersive Technology At The U Of OIT

    U of OIT helped clarify for me that it was a university, indeed. Cool stuff guys. This is the first time I've ever even contemplated going back to school for something.
  12. TeraMedia

    What the PS4 Can and Can't Do

    Sony Product Mgr: "Hey legal, did you finish that negotiation with that DVD industry group yet so that we can support DVD playback?" Sony Legal: "What negotiation? We have already prohibited them from allowing the copying or playback of any of our DVDs or Blu-Rays without physical media...
  13. TeraMedia

    Network Hubs: Bridges Between Devices

    Wow. Just wow. I read this article on the extremely remote chance that there was some functionality to network hubs - or even some very specific hub model - that I didn't know about which allowed them to work as network bridges somehow. I know... not realistic, but even stranger features have...
  14. TeraMedia

    Will People Really Keep Buying Set-Top Boxes?

    What is going to drive the cable box industry in the US is the FCC (or is it FTC?) change to what is required to make a TV work on cable. It used to be that you could watch all of the expanded basic analog channels straight off the cable on any cable-ready TV. That was mandated by law, and...
  15. TeraMedia

    How to Make Your Yahoo Email More Secure

    So now Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, etc. will be really secure!!! Until the mail servers deliver the users' messages to other mail servers, that is. There really isn't much security - at all - in SMTP. A lot of (if not all of) the time, the messages get transmitted from the sender's mail server over...