Posts by Daniel B.
1929 posts • joined Friday 12th October 2007 19:57 GMT
Page:
Re: What if the governments had refused the takeover?
Had the deal gone bad, Sun might've been able to recover if they had actually sell the stuff on their software stack. Their LDAP and IDM solutions are very good; in fact, most of the people from the Identity suite went on and forked the whole thing. Check out ForgeRock!
Re: Other Sun purchase benefits
Oracle hasn't killed MySQL though. The roadmap for the former Sun software stack may be grim, but at least MySQL is still ticking.
blah blah blah
... I want to know more about the Q10. Touchscreen only phones are meh.
Re: @Chad H. Win 8 is a grower
Oh dear, MS wants to copy Apple yet again, and this time they succeeded partially.
They've created MS fanboi legions that are as defensive of their crap as the Apple fanbois are! Admit it, TIFKA Metro looks like an oversized Fabulous Fred and is fugly to use! This article at no point mentions any improvement by the Metro interface.
@quarky
"desktop mode" is what you're in when you're not using the "Fabulous Fred" interface mode.
That said, it seems the engineers are mostly using a front-end app, so they don't suffer from interface change pain. Also, it's a touchscreen device so it does take advantage of the extra stuff, and being a newer OS than XP, driver support must be much better.
Re: I really wish people would stop doing this
Agreed. People buying smartphones aren't going to buy a smartphone vs. gaming console; there will be somef who do, but those wanting mobile gaming might go for the 3DS or PSVita for that. In fact, the 3DS started selling strong when they dropped the pricetag, so I'm guessing the real limiting factor on those is actually related to pricetag, not to "smartphone defeats gaming consoles".
The Wii U, however, sucks.
At least it does seem to be milder...
There's that other guy who asked for underage boy pix and then proceeded to blackmail them into boning 'em.
Anyway, any of these cases of blackmail is just wrong. Nabbing a couple of naked pix from someone else's computer is already unethical, but using them for blackmail purposes is just plain evil.
Re: Limited capacity
Um... Blackberries have the option to encrypt stuff stored on the SD card. The problem could be that not all OSen support this, and that when they do, it isn't interchangeable with other devices or PCs.
Re: Film at 11
I have a pigeon infestation problem at my apartment. One of the possible solutions is exactly that: buying a cat and unleash it against the pigeons!
Easy...
that's because All Your Base are belong to CATS
Re: Copy protection ? Really ?
I remember a particular piece of software that had the "master disk" have a segment burned by a laser, thus causing an error that would serve as the "copy protection". An engineering dude was able to replicate it using a razor blade, but of course, while the crude thing worked, the floppy disk would get more and more damaged as time went by.
FoxPro!
I still have the 2.5 for Windows + Distribution Kit floppies somewhere at my mom's home. Right next to the MS DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 set, so I can theoretically bring up a FoxPro dev system!
I actually held to FoxPro well into the early 21st century; my 2002-01 semester project for a certain course was still made using FoxPro 2.5.
I wish I still had FoxPro 2.0 for DOS, it's the last one that could actually build standalone EXEs...
Re: "the writing is on the wall for desktop computing."
When did the ElReg comment section become MS shill central? I know ya guys don't like Eadon, but that part isn't bullshit. MS did strongarm OEMs to stick XP on netbooks, which were running Linux and doing pretty well. Real analysts even say that Palm's downfall was partly because they axed the Foleo, their own Linux-based netbook that some dumbass in management decided to kill before its release date.
The one market that didn't get killed by MS would be the smartbook one, as that was Apple's to kill with the iPad.
Re: Ughhh @jai
TOS managed to do time-travelling in both the actual series and the movies (basically ST4). But a pretty big element in all time-travelling stories was that you were *not* supposed to alter the past! There's the one where they intercept a weird alien agent and try to stop him from sabotaging a US Missile Test ... only to find out that the sabotage was supposed to happen!
The ST4 one had them retrieving whales that were going to get killed anyway, so the effects of doing that in the past were negligible, while the benefits of bringin 'em to the 23rd century were on a "planet saving" scale.
Re: Preferred @JimC
The reason Excel did a better job on implementing spreadsheets on Windows was because Excel was born on the Macintosh instead of DOS. MS decided to ditch their Multiplan spreadsheet and start from zero with Excel on the Mac. That gave 'em the GUI looks that they could then use on Windows, while the rest of the spreadsheets had to transition from DOS to Windows. A lot of programs that made this transition were usually horrible as the devs would still embrace the DOS conventions instead of taking advantage of the new GUI features. An example: remember who created the ZIP file format? PKZIP. Which program is mostly used for opening/creating such files? WinZip. They aren't made from the same company: PKZIP for Windows sucked, so the competing WinZip took over the market.
I can't quite vouch for 1-2-3, as I mostly used the DOS version but didn't migrate to Windows. But I wouldn't be surprised it if were the same case....
Posted in Fedora project may expel MySQL
Re: Top database tip.
I found another MS Shill! Do I win anything?
Posted in Fedora project may expel MySQL
Re: I am so glad ..
MSSQL is awesomely secure! Last time a filesystem filled up in a former job, the whole DB was impossible to recover! Maximum security: NOBODY will ever be able to read your data! HAHAHAHAHA
Honestly, I switched back to PostgreSQL a long time ago because Monty hated transactions, and that attitude was very visible in the MySQL 3.x documentation. Other gems in that documentation was raging against Foreign Keys, and basically saying you don't need subqueries, or stored procs ... whatever. I now use PostgreSQL for FOSS stuff, and DB2/Sybase/Oracle for more commercial stuff. I try to avoid MSSQL, but given that it's basically ripoff Sybase, I can do that too...
@Frumious Bandersnatch
Yes, you're actually right on the RSA algorithm, they're reversible and in fact, signing is done that way, by encrypting with the private key. The reason swapping files doesn't work is because the private key file contains the P and Q primes, so both public and private keys can be derived from the private key file.
Re: but ...
Actually, you'd be right if the format for private and public key were the same, that is if the files were:
public key: N, e
private key: N, d
as with that format, one key can't be derived from the other. But actually, the private key is usually stored like:
private key: N, e, d, p, q, and other numbers that are derived from these which help for some implementations of RSA.
Re: More detail is needed
I'm guessing that the people stupid enough to upload their private keys are the kind of people that had their keygen process go like this:
$ ssh-keygen
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/dummy/.ssh/id_rsa): <enter>
Created directory '/Users/dummy/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): <enter>
Enter same passphrase again: <enter>
Your identification has been saved in /Users/dummy/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/dummy/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
c3:bb:2a:59:a6:3f:2e:12:e3:4f:36:ca:e9:c2:75:e0 dummy@antares.local
This is one of the widespread bad practices that is sometimes encouraged by some devs. Ditto with having unpassworded MySQL access under the guise of "well, nobody from the outside will ever get access to the box".
Posted in Nokia turns a PROFIT. Sort of
Re: As predicted last year....
I don't want Nokia to fail, I really don't. But if they're going to really return to profitability and previous grandeur, they must sack Elop and restart their OS R&D. The previous smartphone maker that went in bed with MS was Palm. We all know what happened there.
Re: it's 42 @NukEvil
You need to re-read your H2G2 :)
I doubt it'll happen...
.... because of RIM's core biz: secure smartphones for the US & Canadian Gov. Remember when Huawei wanted to buy 3Com? The same would happen with Lenovo/RIM.
Re: Who knew...
The difference is that the CSA was incredibly under-industrialized, underpowered, and had a good % of its population against them: the slaves they refused to count as citizens.
Re: Upgrade = Full
actually, there's a more LULZ worthy method to follow, which was what someone I know did:
1) have laptop/PC running a pirated version of Win7.
2) Get WGA to tell you "d00d you running non-original Windowz"
3) WGA will recommend buying legal Win7, or the cheap Win8 upgrade
4) Buy Win8 upgrade, download, install.
The Win8 upgrade won't care if your Win7 copy was pirated. MS is so desperate to get Win8 out there, they simply don't check if the Win7 was properly licensed or not!
Re: Shooting themselves in the foot? - yes, by releasing Win 8. @Flhart
"Like it or not, computers are about files and directories, devices and connections. Pretending that they are not (as per bloody Apple) is just to breed dumb users who can't fix stuff for themselves, so pester those who can."
As much as Apple loves to hide stuff on their mobile fondleslabs, the directory structure on OSX is actually the same than that used in UNIX. / filesystem, anything else goes under that. Even the user homedirs are under /Users/xxxxxx, even if this breaks with the /home/xxxxx standard or /home/group/xxxxx one, it still looks UNIXy enough to work. AND they also use /dev, so my main disk is usually /dev/disk0s2. They "hide" stuff from common users, but it is there to be seen by savvy users as well.
@RonWheeler
"For a VDI solution where users need Direct3D whizzyness (and in the real non-linux world they do) it is hard to beat"
Direct3D for work? Where do you work, id Software? If anything, *disabling* whizzyness is probably an intended course of action in enterprise PCs/clients as to avoid employees doing LAN parties on company hardware.
Re: @Eadon - openness selling Android
Yeah, I'm pretty sure people know more about Apple's patent warfare than MS's trolling.
But on the openness selling, it is pretty possible that it does have an impact in mobile. On desktop, most people have some dependencies tying them to Windows, especially MS Office. So you can't tell Average Joe to just switch to Linux; even the most radical Linux dudes have eventually returned to the MS Borgship after a couple of years, mostly because Open/LibreOffice will b0rk the documents sent by clients, and the resulting doc looks bad. I took a third option and went OSX instead (and I'm not quite happy with Apple's philosophy either!)
On the mobile platform? Only those who have invested huge wads of $$$ on iOS apps will be tied ... and that would be to iOS, not MS. Anyone else is fair target, which is why the mobile market has been able to shift so suddenly in a 10 year span. 2005? The mobile OS du jour was PalmOS. 2007? Symbian and/or BlackberryOS. 2010? Symbian and iOS. Then Android and iOS. By now, someone might bring out a radically new mobile OS and it might take over the entire market if it is better than the current ones...
Re: Several problems that I can see
Yeah ... cloud storage ain't going to be the sole solution. Cloud outages will ensure that all of us will keep up storing stuff at home for years, not to mention avoiding the Megaupload situation, bandwidth caps & such. Even if we had infinite bandwidth and no legal issues, it would be like moving out of your house and paying rent forever. And "renting out storage" in the 'net is much more expensive than just buying a ton of HDDs, or even SSDs.
For example, you'd get a 10TB RAID0 ThunderBolt device from LaCie for $1100. On a certain "Cloud Storage" Provider, 1Gb (and REAL Gb's, the 1024-based ones and not the fake 1000-based ones HDD mfg uses) costs 10 USD cents. That would be $931.32/month. That is ... in 2 months, cloud storage ends up being *more* expensive than an equivalent storage option which is not only local, it has a stupidly high transfer rate (750Mb/s).
So I don't see the cloud taking over for everything we want anytime soon.
So the MS philosophy is infesting Nokia as well
MS, and companies living in the MS ecosystem are the ones that rely heavily in outsourcing everything to India. So it seems Elop is infesting Nokia with this mindset as well. So sad...
Bad...
"Also, PC-makers' last hope, Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system,"
If PC makers were betting on that turd as a last hope, they deserve to die. Win8 is actually accelerating the slump!
On EDS, well, HP screwed the pooch during the acquisition. Many of the EDS dudes abandoned ship thanks to HP lowering their wages. By now EDS is mostly a shell of its former self...
So...
It had to take Swartz offing himself for someone to actually propose limiting the CFAA so that something exaggerated like this doesn't happen. I hope it doesn't take, say, Jammie Thomas suiciding as well for copyright maddness to be fixed as well!
Something's wrong when distributing files earns 30 in the slammer + millions in fines, and songs cost $10k each.
I found the MS shill!
.NET isn't more secure, it's actually on par with Java on some stuff. On others, Java is better. And .NET is stuck with Active Directory; trying to use a true LDAP for authentication/authorization means you'll have to roll out your own implementation for MembershipProvider and RoleProvider.
Yeech!
Re: I think
But what if company A is proved to be in the wrong? Company A should be held liable for multi-million dollar losses, as unlike the racketeering done by the MPAA/RIAA, such an injunction actually hurts real sales on company B. Penalties should be incredibly steep, coupled with company A losing the patents in question if they have gone for the ITC fast-track as to discourage abuse of this.
And it should be extended to cases where the patents are done over trivial stupidities...
Re: Bah!
"It would help if the loudest anti-windows ranters would actually admit to the last time they had hands-on (or even eyes-on) experience of Windows [insert marketing tag]."
Last Windows experience: WinXP, WinVista, Win7, Win8.
Last Windows Server experience: Win2003, Win2008, Win2008R2.
With Win8 and now Win2012, it seems MS is going backwards.
Too much analysis, the main reason is obvious.
It's the Windows 8, stupid! Companies will have frozen *all* orders for new PC purchases as soon as the win7 kit ran out of stock. People hate TIFKA Metro probably even more than Ribbon when it came out. MS and manufacturers have actually shot themselves in the foot!
MSFT service sucks donkey balls
"That's part of the cost of the Microsoft products; they carry a service warranty with them (to a degree)."
If you want to talk about excellent support service... that would be erstwhile Sun Microsystems, or some of the remaining commercial UNIX vendors. MS "support" usually consists in a phone call with some Indian dude. Sun used to send someone on-site, on-time, on the spot. I haven't experienced Red Hat support yet, but the difference between UNIXy support levels and MS is dismal.
Re: Ye gods
I hate Ruby, and RoR even more. But reading this news alongside a Java 0day exploit, which is my main dev platform is just ... ow. More like "Today's a real bad day to be a programmer."
Someone should out a .NET 0day and a PHP one as well, so that we can all feel miserable ....
Re: can't resist
I blame Oracle. They've fudged and shat all over the Sun stuff they bought. Is it any wonder that exploits have become commonplace *after* Oracle bought Sun?
Re: Dear Microsoft
I'm guessing that won't happen, because M$ is a sore loser. They went for the losing, crappy HD-DVD standard which tanked hardly, and they might even be blamed for that (the menu system & other stuff in HDDVD was MSFT tech). The day HD-DVD died, MS said "oh, physical media is so ded, downloads r d future!" but in truth, they were sore losers.
So now I understand...
That's why the 32-bit UNIX time field will overflow in 2038. The Almighty Dennis Ritchie knew the world would end before that happened!
RFID doesn't work like that
Oh, and by the way ... you fail at tech as well. RFID has a very limited operation range, so its use for missing/kidnapped children is nil. It also makes the "oh noes mark of teh beast" argument kinda silly, because they can't really track students *outside* school because of this very limitation.
For RFID to actually track people everywhere, you would have to have RFID readers *everywhere*.
Re: Did I miss the part
It's written in the new, revised Conservatardpedia version.
Re: The benefits still outweigh the negative...if only clear lenses are used.
"Just look at our recent election results and the poor track record of our president. Even when its right in front of there faces...they choose to ignore the obvious."
Yes, I am also apalled that so many Republicans were elected/re-elected, given their awful record at breaking the US. Wait, that's what you meant, didn't you?
Re: I'm wondering ...
"I have no idea what the ID does for BATHROOM breaks though, do they have card swipe locks on the bathroom doors or something?"
I guess they have RFID checkers in the classroom door, so it won't open unless you have your RFID. It might also serve to track you actually going to the bathroom vs. just skipping out class.
Re: MIPS
I'd advocate any move that gets us out of using the crappy x86 arch, even if it means Intel regaining traction with MIPS or ARM processors. We should've moved to RISC hardware decades ago!
RedHat already had support from MS on that....
There was already a "HyperV guest tools" ISO image for RHEL, and could be hacked to work on Ubuntu. It would put the drivers for the virtual network card, virtual HDD and something else I can't remember. RHEL only added it to the stock drivers in the distro, I'd guess.
As an MBP owner...
I think the Retina MacBooks are for posers and/or gamers. Maybe. I'd probably strike out gamers, because the Retinas aren't upgradable, and thus you can't up 'em to 16Gb like my non-Retina MBP. Apple can sell overpriced Retinas because people still drool at the fruity stuff and will spend $$$ if they can on that.
That said, regular, non-Retina MacBooks are pretty much worth their price. I do wish they had user-replaceable batteries, but on the rest, they're pretty much customizable. And even if a Mac is more expensive than a typical PC Laptop, knowing I am not paying the M$ tax is a huge plus for me!
You aren't the only one.
I didn't spend *that* much in my W8 h8, but I did buy a 13" MBP instead of a "regular" laptop because of Win8. It was getting stuck with that POS or doing the mighty jump to OSX. And given that a former boss managed to skip Windows entirely thanks to choosing OSX since day one (he mostly used Solaris, so he didn't even use windows at work) and the UNIXy aspects of OSX well... it was worth jumping back to Mac. (I stopped using it sometime around 1997. Previous to that, we were a Mac house.) Ironically, my jump to Windows/PC had been on dev grounds, MS being more "open" than Apple for development stuff. Currently, MS is a broken ecosystem where something you might learn will be deprecated in a couple of years.
Thankfully, my main dev platform these days is Java.
Re: Office for Linux? @LDS
"That's exactly why you'll never see an Office for Linux - you need Windows to run it."
I'm using Office right now ... on Mac OS X. They do release stuff outside their M$ ecosystem, they just haven't added Linux to the mix. And they actually should go on an Office for Linux; it could give them an escape route when Windows finally comes crashing down. I don't think it will happen soon though; it'll take a couple of years before Windows loses the OS wars. Hell, if Apple were to open up, they might even take over the Windows market entirely at this rate. The Mac version of Office still has menus (and the Ribbon) because the OS doesn't have menu-less apps, by the way.
